Preamble

The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY

The Secretary of State was asked—

Oral Answers to Questions — Marks and Spencer

Helen Jones (Warrington, North): What support he is providing for those facing redundancy as a result of the planned closure of Marks and Spencer Direct. [159055]

The Minister for Competitiveness (Mr. Alan Johnson): The North West development agency has met the local management team at Marks and Spencer in Warrington and discussed possible assistance, including access to the rapid response fund. Other partners, including the Employment Service, the Cheshire and Warrington local skills council and Warrington borough council are also ready to provide support and guidance to the staff affected.

Helen Jones: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply and for the support that we have had from his Department so far. Will he use his best endeavours to ensure that Marks and Spencer works in close liaison with the economic development department of the local council, which is doing its best to find jobs for those who will lose their current posts? Will he also tell me what funds will be available for retraining for those who need it?

Mr. Johnson: I can assure my hon. Friend that all the agencies will work together to ensure that we mitigate the effects of this announcement. Incidentally, Invest UK has sent details of the Marks and Spencer facilities at Warrington to its key overseas posts, which are making contact with the relevant companies in their regions that might be interested in acquiring the site. It has also achieved agreement from Marks and Spencer that all the facilities in the surrounding outlets, including the distribution centre at Warrington, will be made available. We particularly want to ensure that the call centre is taken over as a going concern, including the facility of financial assistance. My hon. Friend has represented her constituents assiduously in this case and we will do all that we can to work with her to find a satisfactory conclusion.

Mr. David Tredinnick: Is the Minister aware that closures at Marks and Spencer always have a

devastating effect in my constituency, particularly in Hinckley? Will he reflect on the fact that, after four years of Labour Government, there has been an endless list of closures of firms in the hosiery and knitwear industries in my constituency, including Pex, Brookside Dyers, Smallshaw group, Stannards and Capital Leisure? There is a perception that the Government have done absolutely nothing for manufacturing in the midlands and especially in my constituency.

Mr. Johnson: I am aware of the job losses in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. The textiles and clothing industry has been going through a hard time. What we have done, in co-operation with the industry and its work force, is to set up the national strategy for the UK textiles and clothing industry, which includes a whole series of initiatives supported by the industry, to improve its competitiveness. We will continue that work to ensure that the kind of losses suffered by the hon. Gentleman's constituents are mitigated and that there will be a turnaround in the industry.

Oral Answers to Questions — Steel Industry

Mr. Denis MacShane: If he will make a statement on the future of the UK steel industry. [159059]

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Stephen Byers): This morning, Corus has announced that it intends to proceed with the redundancies that it first outlined on 1 February. I know that many Members will understand and share the bitterness felt by Corus workers at this decision. Our priority now must be to offer practical support to the individuals affected and to put in place measures to promote economic regeneration and job creation.
For the individual steelworker, we will provide training opportunities and support from the Employment Service. In addition, to assist those individuals we will introduce a modernised form of the previous iron and steel employees re-adaptation benefits scheme—ISERBS. We shall do this under article 56 of the European Coal and Steel Community treaty. Under our proposed scheme, we will draw down European Community funds, which are available only until July 2002, so that each worker will receive an additional lump sum of about £2,500. That will complement the support for training that we are also making available and the employment credit for the over-50s.
The revised ISERBS scheme will cover not only those steelworkers affected by the announcement of 1 February, but all those made redundant from January 2000. About 12,000 steelworkers will benefit. In England, we shall put in place a package of regeneration measures at a cost of £48 million. A programme on a similar scale is being announced by the First Minister in Wales.
When Corus first announced these redundancies, we said that we would not walk away from the workers affected, their families or the communities in which they live. With a programme of action to bring hope to individuals and economic regeneration and job creation to those areas involved, today we are delivering on that commitment.

Mr. MacShane: Steelworkers will be sad that Corus has broken off its talks with the trade unions, turned away


from the path of partnership and put 6,000 men on the dole. It has done so in a context in which the steel industry has inherited politics that have been hostile to manufacturing for 20 years. In the 1990s, Britain was the only country in which steel consumption went down, while it went up in America and Europe.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about people losing their jobs, but he must ask a question so that the Minister can reply to it.

Mr. MacShane: Will my right hon. Friend join me in condemning Corus, and will he ensure that the ISERBS money that I first suggested, I think, last year is brought quickly into play? Will he also leave on his desk, for either himself or his successor, some new thinking on how manufacturing can be supported after the election? While he and the Prime Minister are committed, the attitude in Whitehall and the City remains hostile. We need a new deal and a new manufacturing policy.

Mr. Byers: I will leave a memo for myself on my return to the Department. It will make it clear that manufacturing must be regarded as a priority for any country that wants a stable economy in the future.
My hon. Friend made two specific points about the modernised ISERBS. We will deliver it as quickly as we can. It is subject to approval from the European Community, but we have notified the Community of our intention to introduce a scheme, and we expect approval to be given very soon.
As for the actions of Corus, we hoped that the company was genuine when it said that it wanted to discuss with the unions proposals for restructuring to find an alternative way forward. It is a matter of deep regret, to say the least, that when the unions presented their alternative proposals on a plant-by-plant basis, they were rejected out of hand by Corus. I think that when the management of Corus reflect on their actions in this whole saga, they will realise that the trade unions were right and Corus was wrong.

Mr. Michael Fabricant: The Secretary of State will know that Corus is maintaining its operations in other parts of the world. Since its decision, Motorola has also had to make a decision about whether to close plants in Britain or in Germany. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a director of Motorola has reminded me that, during his stewardship of the Department of Trade and Industry—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot allow a question on Motorola; the hon. Gentleman must ask a question about the steel industry.

Mr. Fabricant: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Is the hon. Gentleman going to ask about steel?

Mr. Fabricant: Yes, Mr. Speaker.
I was reminded that, during the right hon. Gentleman's stewardship, the United Kingdom's competitiveness has fallen from fourth place to 10th. Would that not have affected Corus's decision on whether to stay open in the

United Kingdom, just as it affected Motorola's decision? Why is Corus closing in the United Kingdom, and not in Germany and the United States?

Mr. Byers: If the hon. Gentleman looks at figures showing the way in which manufacturing employment has declined in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States—all the major industrialised countries—he will see that the percentage fall has been broadly the same in all those countries.
What the hon. Gentleman failed to mention was that this morning Ernst and Young is publishing its latest figures on inward investment in Europe. It has said very clearly that the United Kingdom is the number one location for such investment.

Mr. Llew Smith: I welcome the package negotiated by the Government, particularly the additional money for Ebbw Vale and the additional £2,500 for each worker who has been made redundant. Does my right hon. Friend accept, however, that no package deal can compensate for the loss of more than 1,000 jobs in Blaenau Gwent, one of the poorest areas in the United Kingdom? Does he also accept that since Corus was formed, instead of concentrating their energies on building up the steel industry, Moffat and his fellow directors have done nothing but asset-strip the industry and line their own pockets? Does he agree that the honourable thing for Moffat and his directors to do now is resign?

Mr. Byers: There is no doubt that today's confirmation by Corus of its decision will be a bitter blow for Blaenau Gwent, and for communities in that part of south Wales. The First Minister is making a statement in the Welsh Assembly today, outlining a package of some £32 million to help Ebbw Vale and Llanwern overcome the difficulties that they will face.
My hon. Friend is right to point out that although there will be a measure of regeneration and job creation, that will not help individuals who face the prospect of losing their employment now. They need to know that they have a Government working alongside them, alongside their unions and alongside their community to find a better way forward, and that is what the package seeks to achieve.
As I said at the outset, the bitterness and anger felt by Corus workers will be shared by many Members of Parliament. What we must now do is work through this difficult period, and offer individuals, their families and communities, in Blaenau Gwent and elsewhere in Wales and England, some real hope for the future.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): Given the evidence that the Welsh Affairs Committee heard yesterday from the joint chair and chief executive of Corus that the Government have been on notice of huge redundancies since the beginning of last June and that he has met the right hon. Gentleman several times, why has no rescue package whatever been offered to the company until now?

Mr. Byers: I think that the hon. Gentleman is aware, because he has followed the discussion, that a package was offered to Corus, but was turned down. Sir Brian Moffat indicated very clearly that the measures that we


were prepared to put in place were not significant in terms of the overall problem that he faced, but a package was there. We have had this discussion in the House before. Corus was simply not interested in the package.
I have noted what Sir Brian Moffat said before the Welsh Affairs Committee yesterday, but I reinforce the point that I have made to the House on previous occasions—we were ready and willing to come forward with a package, but Corus was simply not interested.

Mr. Paul Flynn: Is not it contemptible that this amoral international company played off one group of workers in this country against groups of workers elsewhere? Newport will suffer severely from Corus's decision, but it is a resilient town that will start to fight back now.
Although we are grateful for the resurrection of ISERBS, will the Secretary of State and the Government look at the proposal by Newport borough council to introduce a regeneration company, which will act positively to rebuild the economy of Newport—which still remains, even after Corus's decision, the most attractive place in Wales for new business investment?

Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend is right. Great strengths exist in Newport which will see it through the difficulties that it will face over the coming weeks and months. He makes an important point about the valuable role that an urban regeneration company can play. In his announcement in Cardiff this morning, the First Minister will outline that that is very much one of the options that he wants to pursue with the local partners in Newport and in that part of south Wales.

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: The Secretary of State is now trying to clear up the mess in the steel industry of his own making and as usual he blames everyone but himself. It is the Government who have been in charge of economic policy for the past four years. Will he confirm that, this week, he received a letter from seven manufacturing trade associations describing what they call a downward spiral in their industries, and demanding the withdrawal of what they term the damaging and unfair climate change levy and a halt to the 10 business regulations a day that the Government have imposed on them over the past four years? Will he also confirm that, according to the Government's own figures, the productivity gap in the steel industry and in other British industries has widened since 1997? Before he denies that, it comes from his Department's expenditure report published two months ago.
In the face of the mounting job losses and all the complaints from the people at the front line of British industry, will the Secretary of State at last start to listen to what manufacturing is telling him and start to stand up for British industry against the demands of the Treasury, or is he content for manufacturing to be the sector that Labour forgot?

Mr. Byers: Because it suits the right hon. Gentleman's purpose, he does not mention the fact that large sections of manufacturing are desperate for this country to join the single European currency. He does not mention that because it does not fit in with his political agenda. He wants to make a broader political point, so he ignores the

situation in steel. He mentioned productivity. He needs to be aware that the 6,000 people who have today been made redundant by Corus are some of the most productive steel workers in the world—that is the reality of the situation.
Steel productivity has improved dramatically in recent years. Decent, hard-working people have been affected by today's decision. As the main question is on steel, the right hon. Gentleman should consider the steel productivity figures. If he addressed that issue, he would realise that those people are productive workers who have dramatically improved their productivity.
Steelworkers across the country, whether in south Wales or in Teesside, know what happened to their industry under years of Tory rule—they were slaughtered under the Tories, and nothing was done to help them. They were the innocent victims. The Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member walked away from what they did, but we will not do that.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say to the Minister and to Opposition Front Benchers that I want shorter questions and shorter replies.

Oral Answers to Questions — Regional Investment

Ms Rosie Winterton: If he will make a statement on his strategy for promoting inward investment in the English regions. [159060]

The Minister for Trade (Mr. Richard Caborn): Invest UK is the Government agency that promotes the whole of the United Kingdom as the best inward investment location in Europe, and it works in partnership with the United Kingdom's development agencies.
As my right hon. Friend said, Ernst and Young's "Investment Monitor" was issued today and shows very clearly that the UK's number of inward investment projects has increased by 13 per cent. on last year. The UK enjoys investment rate growth that is more than twice that of Europe, and we are Europe's favourite investment location. Our market share has also gone up by 2 per cent., so that we now receive 26 per cent. of all investment into Europe.

Ms Winterton: Almost 6,000 jobs in Yorkshire and Humberside have been created as a consequence of inward investment secured by Yorkshire Forward. However, if our region is to be at the leading edge of the knowledge economy, we will have to increase the amount of high-quality inward investment in research and development. When my right hon. Friend next meets Yorkshire Forward, will he discuss with it what can be done across Government to increase such investment and to help restructure our industrial base in the region, particularly in the light of today's announcement by Corus?

Mr. Caborn: My hon. Friend asks a very pertinent question. Regional development agencies, particularly the one that operates in my hon. Friend's constituency in Yorkshire, have been established in the north-west and the north-east to organise inward investment from north America to what they call the greater north of England. Additionally, in our White Paper a few months ago we considered the matter of clusters. We are now rewriting


the cluster policy as an inward investment prospectus for all those who want to invest internationally in our knowledge economy. I think that that will keep us at the leading edge of technology and ensure that we continue to move manufacturing up the value-added chain.

Mr. Tony Baldry: What real help is the Department of Trade and Industry giving to businesses that have already invested in the regions, but recently found their business decimated by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease? After examining the small print of the help that the Government are offering, many businesses see very little, if any, real help being offered. It is another example of all spin and no substance.

Mr. Caborn: There is to be a statement on foot and mouth later today—

Mr. Baldry: What about the Department of Trade and Industry?

Mr. Caborn: The regional development agencies in the four worst-hit regions have had an additional £15 million on top of the £8 million available in their own budgets. I know that they have been working very hard. Furthermore, my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business and E—Commerce and my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment have been working with the regional development agencies to ensure that they mitigate the worst circumstances being experienced in those regions by the businesses to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Oral Answers to Questions — Wind Energy

Mr. Bob Blizzard: What support he will give to the development of offshore wind energy generation. [159061]

The Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe (Mr. Peter Hain): Offshore wind will be eligible for the new renewables obligation that we propose to introduce this October. Of the £260 million allocated for renewables support over the next three years, at least £49 million has been allocated specifically for offshore wind, and that sum may well increase.

Mr. Blizzard: I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that East Anglia is in an ideal position to develop offshore wind power. SLP Engineering of Lowestoft, a company with a fine track record in fabricating offshore oil and gas platforms, is in the right place to develop, manufacture and erect offshore windmills, and is already building a prototype offshore wind turbine at Britain's most easterly point. Given the downturn in the offshore oil and gas fabrication industry, will he consider the company's eligibility for diversification grant to provide much-needed jobs in Lowestoft, which has been designated an assisted area by his Department?

Mr. Hain: By all means, I will consider that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: SLP Engineering has a fine reputation in offshore gas and oil exploration, drilling and platform construction. We would like the company, and the industry around my hon. Friend's constituency,

to diversify increasingly from oil and gas—although maintaining that where appropriate—and explore the enormous potential for offshore wind development.
We recently announced 18 new projects, right around the coast of England and Wales. The forthcoming renewables obligation will provide £3 billion of investments, and the Government are supporting that with more than £250,000 of research and development project aid grant. We can drive forward the renewables agenda, bringing to it our unique expertise on the UK continental shelf.

Mr. Nick Gibb: The Minister said in The Times yesterday that if Labour was re-elected, he wanted a second Labour term to be more radical and left wing. Would that increased left-wing verve mean even more regulation for energy companies and industry generally? Would it mean even more levies on consumers electricity bills and increased electricity costs for both consumers and industry, as he imposes higher and higher renewables targets? Does he accept that a gloves-off second Labour term would be a disaster for the energy sector and a disaster for British industry?

Mr. Hain: I note that the hon. Gentleman has already conceded the general election. The answer to all his questions is no. I remind the House and the public that the Conservatives' record on renewables in 18 years of government was pathetic. We are now driving forward the agenda. More and more green energy will be the future for Britain, and, yes, I do see myself and the Government championing that. The Prime Minister has put his considerable authority behind it, with the announcement of £100 million of new support for renewables.

Mrs. Betty Williams: My hon. Friend's answer is of great importance to constituencies in the north-west. Is he aware of the major significance for manufacturing in my constituency, where Cambrian Engineering, based on the Llandegai industrial estate in Bangor, is a leading company in wind farm equipment? Does he agree that offshore wind farms can also be tourist attractions and will be a benefit to the coastal strip in north Wales?

Mr. Hain: I very much agree. Indeed, I had the privilege of visiting Cambrian Engineering with my hon. Friend before the previous general election. I was very impressed with its desire to increase production so as to rival the Scandinavian producers of wind turbines, and towers in particular, in which the company has especial expertise. We want to harness the enormous potential of offshore and, indeed, onshore wind in Britain, and in my hon. Friend's constituency in particular.

Oral Answers to Questions — Consumer Rights

Mr. Simon Hughes: What plans he has for reviewing the rights of consumers after (a) bankruptcy and (b) insolvency. [159062]

The Minister for Trade (Mr. Richard Caborn): I have no such plans at present.

Mr. Hughes: That is not good enough. With that kind of answer, the Minister may not even get re-elected.
I have a constituent on jobseeker's allowance, and another who is a pensioner, who each lost about £1,000 deposit when they paid for some furniture offered for sale by Uno for World of Leather, which went into liquidation in March 2000. They are entirely dissatisfied, as are thousands of consumers, because the companies appear to have known that they were going into insolvency when they did the business. They reformed within two weeks, having been sold on to another company, and reopened as New World of Leather.
If the customers had been able to pay by credit card, they might have been protected. As they were not able to do so—as many poorer people are not—they had no protection. The law needs fundamental change. Can the Minister be much more effective, much less complacent and promise some action from Labour, because otherwise it might have to come from someone else?

Mr. Caborn: The hon. Gentleman raises a serious question. Some 21,000 customers of Uno were affected and we immediately asked the administrators to submit a report to the Secretary of State. An interim report was submitted in September 2000 and our insolvency service started working on the question of disqualification. The final report was submitted in April and we shall now consider what action to take on the disqualification of directors. In conjunction with the Office of Fair Trading, we are considering a new code, and a consultation document has been issued. The Government believe that the voluntary code of practice can still play an important role.
As the hon. Gentleman said, those with credit cards have some safeguard when paying a deposit if it is more than £100, and we recommend that people ensure that it is. We are taking action to ensure that rogue traders are rooted out and, if necessary, disqualified. I remind the House that some 2,800 directors have been disqualified in the past two years.

Mr. Andrew Reed: It disturbs me to agree with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), but he and I, like many other hon. Members, have constituents who suffered as a result of the closure of World of Leather. I urge that action be taken for the sake of the consumer and for people such as a constituent of mine who runs a small engineering business. He was recently affected by the closure of Wadkin of Leicester, which left him with a £46,000 debt from that company. My constituent's company may go under as a consequence, yet Wadkin knew full well that it was going under at the time. Much more protection should be given to small businesses and individuals in that situation, and I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to build on the code of conduct and consider further legislation in the next Parliament.

Mr. Caborn: As I said, a consultation document has been issued by the Office of Fair Trading, and I agree that we need to try to tighten up the operation of the code. However, we do not want to place an undue burden on business because the customer will have to pay for whatever policing we put in place. We will try to root out

unacceptable behaviour through the voluntary code, and we are consulting with all parties to try to toughen the code of conduct.

Mr. Richard Page: Instead of giving such a weak and spinning answer to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), why does not the Minister apologise for the fact that the Government have broken their promise to introduce a consumer Bill in this Parliament? Why does he not say, "We are very sorry, but we have produced only half an insolvency Bill because we were late sending out the second half of the consultation"? Why does he not apologise for spending £200,000 and more persecuting a poor hapless Sunderland fruit and vegetable trader for the heinous and terrible crime of selling 34p worth of bananas in pounds rather than in kilograms? It takes a man to apologise, and I invite the Minister to be such a man.

Mr. Caborn: I think that is from the World of Leather to the world of blather. The hon. Gentleman has excelled himself in probably the last Trade and Industry questions in this Parliament, and I shall treat his remarks with the contempt they deserve.

Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours: The first Bill on which I worked after my election in 1979 was the one that became the Competition Act 1980. We discussed this very issue during our proceedings, and for 20 years since then Back-Bench Members of all parties have pushed successive Governments on the matter. I will not be in the next Parliament, but may I express the hope that the Government will really sort the problem out? It is a major problem, and consumers all over Britain are very angry.

Mr. Caborn: First, may I, on behalf of the House, thank my hon. Friend for what he has done at Question Time while he has been a Member of Parliament? He has successfully probed many a Minister standing at the Dispatch Box. I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned for 20 years for consumer protections, and that is to his credit. When the Government are re-elected, I hope that we will take on board the serious comments that he has made over the years, and that we will be able to encapsulate that in the action that we take.

Oral Answers to Questions — Manufacturing (Vale of York)

Miss Anne McIntosh: If he will make a statement on manufacturing industry in the Vale of York. [159063]

The Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce (Ms Patricia Hewitt): The Government are supporting manufacturing business in the Vale of York and throughout the Yorkshire and Humber regions. We have allocated an extra £50 million a year over the next three years to regional development agencies. That includes £10 million to Yorkshire Forward to promote innovation and economic development throughout the region.

Miss McIntosh: Is not the Minister ashamed that the Government have presided over 350,000 job losses in manufacturing industry across the country? More than 600 such jobs have been lost in the Vale of York.


Samsung closed its plant at Flaxby Moor, and more than 100 jobs were lost. British Aerospace lost its plant at Sutton-on-the-Forest, with a loss of more than 50 jobs. The Monroe shock absorber factory closed last year and 392 jobs were lost, and 76 jobs will be lost when the Lawson Mardon packaging factory closes in June. In addition, 64 jobs are under threat at Range Powermax. Will the Minister confirm that the Government have failed manufacturing in the Vale of York?

Ms Hewitt: I am astonished that the hon. Lady made no reference to the 1 million jobs lost in manufacturing industry in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. Many of those jobs were in the Vale of York. The Government will take no lectures about manufacturing industry from the hon. Lady or from any other Conservative Member. It is a great pity that the hon. Lady does not recognise the many strengths of manufacturing industry, in her constituency and across the country.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that productivity in the steel industry has grown, but productivity has grown in manufacturing industry in general at a rate of 6 per cent. a year. There has been an increase in manufacturing output and exports in the past three months, and forecasters generally agree that there will be further growth this year. Unlike the record of the previous Government, that is a record of which we can be proud.

Oral Answers to Questions — Chemical Industry

Mr. Derek Twigg: What contribution the chemical industry in (a) the UK and (b) the north-west made to GDP in the last year for which figures are available. [159064]

The Minister for Competitiveness (Mr. Alan Johnson): In 1997, the chemical industry nationally accounted for 2.2 per cent. of the UK's GDP, with approximately 0.5 per cent. attributable to the north-west.

Mr. Twigg: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he recognise the strategic importance of the Ineos Chlor firm in Runcorn, in my constituency? It is the second biggest chlorine producer in Europe and employs about 2,000 people. Will he do all that he can to ensure that the firm's grant application comes to a successful conclusion soon? The background is that there have been 450 redundancies in my constituency, and that ICI may not have given the firm all the details and information necessary to make investment decisions before it was sold.
Finally, will my hon. Friend do what he can to help the employees and managers at Bush Boake Allen Inc. in my constituency? They are in the middle of a management buy-out at the moment, and redundancies are also possible there.

Mr. Johnson: We are in touch with both companies. Ineos is one of the most important chlorine producers in the country. We are in close touch with Ineos and the regional development agency in connection with future support for the company. As we speak, we are discussing a regional selective assistance application for the plant.
We are also in close contact with the other company mentioned by my hon. Friend. The chemicals industry is very important to the country, and in fact is the largest manufacturing sector. It is especially important to the north-west. Last year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State launched the north-west chemicals initiative. We intend to ensure that the sector and the region get the fullest support from the Government.

Mr. Graham Brady: The Minister will know that the Government's new energy tax will hit manufacturing and chemical industries in the north and the midlands especially hard. It will not hit service industries in the south so hard. What calculations has he made of the net outflow of tax revenue from the north and the midlands that will occur because of the introduction of the climate change levy?

Mr. Johnson: The DTI has negotiated successfully with the chemicals industry the levy discount scheme of up to 80 per cent., which the industry has greatly welcomed. The plant that has just been mentioned—Ineos—pays no climate change levy. It is exempted because it is part of the electrolysis process, which is very important.

Mr. Alan Duncan: E-business.

Mr. Johnson: Yes, but I think the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) is exaggerating the effect of a very important process in ensuring that we keep to the Kyoto commitments, which I believe all parties should fully support.

Mr. Andrew Miller: Given the importance of the sector to the north-west, and the fact that, as it is a higher paid industry with lots of housing associated with former workers close by, pockets of deprivation have inevitably been created close to the industry, will my hon. Friend enter into discussions with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the industry to see what positive measures can be put in place to help to regenerate employment in areas close to the sector?

Mr. Johnson: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The chemicals industry is so important to the north-west because of the points that he makes. The RDA has made the chemicals industry a priority for that region. However, it is important to emphasise that the growth in chemicals has consistently outpaced the growth in the economy overall. Indeed, the growth in the chemicals sector last year was double that of manufacturing in general. The industry has a good future, but we must ensure, as my hon. Friend says, that we deal with some of the problems that we inherited from the past.

Oral Answers to Questions — Chester Street Holdings

Mr. Alan Campbell: What plans he has to institute a DTI inspector's inquiry into the events leading up to the collapse of Chester Street Holdings. [159066]

The Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce (Ms Patricia Hewitt): I share my hon. Friend's concern about the collapse of Chester Street Holdings and the dreadful situation of thousands of men who are suffering from asbestos-related diseases and whose employers' insurance policies were held by that firm. We are working across Government to resolve this very complex situation as quickly as possible to help the sufferers and their families.

Mr. Campbell: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Is she aware of the great sense of anger on Tyneside at the way in which asbestos victims are being denied proper compensation while directors of the company, such as Mr. Robert Hardy, are lining their pockets with huge wage rises and bonuses? What assurances can my hon. Friend give that all asbestos victims will receive proper compensation, and that lessons will be learned from this, not just for workers in other industries, but for the insurance industry as a whole?

Ms Hewitt: I am indeed aware of the anger and despair felt by the victims and their families. Let me make it clear that we will not allow the insurance industry to walk away from Chester Street Holdings or from the people who thought that their employers had effective insurance cover with that company. As my hon. Friend is aware, the Policyholders Protection Board will protect individuals whose employer no longer exists and whose insurance policy was compulsory. We are working with the insurance industry, as my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary has made clear, to deal with the position of employees whose employer no longer exists but whose insurance cover was not compulsory. Between us, we will ensure that lessons are learned and that matters are put right, not only for these individuals but for the future.

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: The collapse of Chester Street Holdings needs investigating. However, does the hon. Lady agree that it is no use having a report unless it is published? So before she launches a new DTI inquiry, will she reveal the information that her Department already holds on the connection between the late Robert Maxwell, the business dealings of the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), and the funding of the Labour party? Will she confirm that that report was carried out two years ago by her Department, but it remains a cover-up because it had not been—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question is narrower than the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises. Any right hon. or hon. Member who is attacked in any way should be given notice of that, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has given such notice. However, the original question was far narrower than the area that he is going into.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I am not attacking the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West—I am simply pointing out the subject of a report that is held by the DTI and which is not being published, in defiance of all the

principles of openness and good government. Will the Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce publish that report?

Mr. Speaker: Order. What the Minister will do is reply on Chester Street Holdings. If the right hon. Gentleman has nothing to say about Chester Street Holdings, the Minister will have nothing to say, either.

Ms Hewitt: I think that the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) has made clear his complete lack of interest in the victims of the collapse of Chester Street. It was the Labour Government who, in 1999, banned the importing, the sale and the use of all forms of asbestos. In relation to Chester Street, we are seeing—in those victims—the effect of years of neglect of asbestos problems by previous Governments.
On the other matter raised by the right hon. Gentleman, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has made the legal position clear. The right hon. Member for Wells does not seem interested in facts of law on that case.

Oral Answers to Questions — Euro

Dr. Julian Lewis: What the implications are for businesses of replacing the pound by the single European currency. [159069]

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Stephen Byers): Provided the five economic tests laid down by the Chancellor are met, and the Government, Parliament and the British people agree to join, we believe that there would be benefits for British business in membership of the single European currency, particularly in respect of trade, transparency of costs and currency stability.

Dr. Lewis: I congratulate the Secretary of State on reading out his mantra so fluently. If there are those benefits, how can he explain the discrepancy that, whereas British public opinion is against joining the single currency and scrapping the pound to the tune of two thirds of the entire population, British businesses are against joining the single currency and scrapping the pound to the tune of three quarters of British businesses? What do British businesses know that make them so much more opposed to new Labour's policy of scrapping the pound than even the vast majority of the electorate at large?

Mr. Byers: I do not know the source for the hon. Gentleman's view that three quarters of British businesses are opposed, but certainly the CBI and British Chambers of Commerce—[Laughter.] It is an interesting change in the political landscape when a mention of the CBI has Tory Members groaning. What a change we have seen! The reality is that the CBI knows that the Government's policy on the single currency is the right one—for the simple reason that we are putting the national interest first, not the interest of party. The issue divides the Conservative party from top to bottom—that is the reality. The Conservatives have therefore cobbled together a


policy that really does not stand up to the tests. The Government's policy is clear. Our view is: why not simply let the British people decide?

Ms Sally Keeble: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the particular pressures of our being outside the single currency for foreign companies making investment decisions in the UK? He is aware that the US-owned company British Timkin has closed in Northampton, with the loss of 950 jobs. People in Northampton appreciated the prompt response of the Government in setting up a taskforce. I wonder if my right hon. Friend could—[Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh, but people in Northampton appreciated that response, which was in marked contrast to anything done about job losses by the Conservative Government.
Will my right hon. Friend give two assurances? First, while trying to attract inward investment, will there be a focus on bringing high quality engineering and manufacturing jobs to Northampton to replace those that were lost? Secondly, will my right hon. Friend say what the Government intend—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the Minister has enough to go on with.

Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend is right to say that there are major international companies, such as British Timkin, that have taken decisions in relation to the weakness of the euro vis-à-vis the strength of sterling, and that, clearly, was one of the reasons behind the decision that British Timkin took. The Government will not walk away from the difficulties created by that decision, but will work with local people, local Members of Parliament and local businesses to see Northampton through those difficulties.
My hon. Friend is also right to say that there are major inward investors who have made it very clear that, if the Government had ruled out joining the single European currency for a fixed period, inward investment decisions would not have been made in favour of the United Kingdom. The head of Nissan, Carlo Ghosn, said very clearly when he announced the investment in Sunderland that it would not have been made if we had had a policy of refusing to join the single European currency during the next Parliament—and Conservative Members and those on their Front Bench need to answer those questions. What about the effects on inward investment?

Mr. Alan Duncan: If we were to join the euro, we would have not just a single currency, but a single interest rate, so the only variables left to take the strain of economic management would be taxation, transfer payments, wages and prices. Big companies could spread their activities across national boundaries, but smaller, United Kingdom-based companies would not be able to do so. For them, there would be the pain of the exchange rate mechanism all over again, with the European Union controlling taxes and grants and with domestic wages and prices taking all the pain. Will the Secretary of State explain exactly how he thinks that UK companies could, in any way, escape from that pressure?

Mr. Byers: Interestingly, there was no mention of the effects that the Conservative policy would have on inward investment. On the particulars of the question asked, the hon. Gentleman mentions the difficulties that arose from

ERM—a creation of the then Conservative Government, especially the terms under which the United Kingdom entered it. The reason why the five economic tests laid down by the Chancellor are so important is that they will ensure that if joining the single European currency is an issue, it will be done on terms that are in the interests of British businesses, both large and small. The point is that we are not adopting a policy of ruling out joining just for political convenience; we are putting the national interest first and letting the British people decide.

Oral Answers to Questions — Miners (Compensation)

Mr. Jon Trickett: If he will make a statement on the progress made by IRISC in the settlement of compensation claims by former miners suffering from vibration white finger and respiratory diseases. [159070]

The Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe (Mr. Peter Hain): As at 22 April, IRISC, the Department's claims handling agents, have paid out more than £406 million in compensation for respiratory and vibration related disease. It continues to pay more than £1 million a day, and we expect that to rise sharply during the coming months.

Mr. Trickett: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he recall that, for 18 years, the Conservative party did nothing for the miners in that respect, while closing the pits in a vindictive attack on mining communities? Is he aware that there are still on-going delays in the settlement of claims? Those delays, which often seem to derive from bureaucratic problems and paper chasing, can often lead to frustration and anger.
Will my hon. Friend continue to press IRISC to settle all claims as quickly as possible, while minimising bureaucracy? Will he consider informing claimants directly of the reasons for the delays, rather than doing so simply through their solicitors? The frustration often arises because the claimants are unaware of the reasons for the delays.

Mr. Hain: I reassure my hon. Friend that we will certainly take his comments on board. The procedure is laid down by the courts, and the claims handling agreement, negotiated thereafter, requires the solicitors to be the main conduit of communication with individual claimants. I pay tribute to the dedicated work that my hon. Friend does on behalf of retired miners, their widows and the working members of the National Union of Mineworkers. In his constituency, they have no better champion. I reassure him that more money will be paid during the next five months than has been paid during the past three years.
The whole compensation scheme is being speeded up. Widows are getting interim payments. We are prioritising the oldest and sickest miners so that they go to the top of the queue. Previously, they could find themselves way down it. We are making sure that all the problems that have beset the scheme are ironed out. It is the biggest


compensation scheme in British history. This Labour Government are delivering it, unlike the Tories who denied miners their rights of justice for many years.

Mr. Andrew Robathan: The payment of compensation and individual claims is, of course, complicated. Did the Minister hear the Bishop of Wakefield yesterday saying how disappointed all the people in his diocese were who, after four years of the Labour Government's grandiose promises, expected some delivery but were still waiting?

Mr. Hain: That, coming from a Conservative Member, takes the biscuit. If the bishop wishes, he should by all means speak to me about this. If he had made those comments perhaps a year ago, there would have been a lot of validity in them. We have reformed the system, ironed out the problems and are driving it forward at the rate of more than £1 million a day. In Yorkshire we have paid out £115 million on the miners' compensation scheme. It is accelerating all the time and that figure will double within the next five months. That is a tribute to this Government's absolute commitment to bringing justice to the retired miners and their widows who were denied it for so long by the Tory Government.

Mr. Martin O'Neill: There is a growing understanding in mining communities of the work being done and the scale of the problem. Let us not forget that week by week more and more miners are diagnosed with the condition, so are added to the books and the numbers that have to be dealt with. Many of us remember when the basis of a claim had to be made on a post mortem. Those hypocrites on the other side of the House—[Interruption]—did nothing to help mining communities when they faced these dreadful problems. The scale of the work and the sums involved require—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will wish to withdraw the term "hypocrite". There are no hypocrites in this House.

Mr. O'Neill: I withdraw the direct reference to hypocrites and substitute the word "hypocrisy" in the appropriate context.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I asked the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the word "hypocrite". I ask him to stand up and withdraw that remark.

Mr. O'Neill: I withdraw it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend, who represents a coal mining area, is well aware of the anguish during so many years of Tory rule and of the fact that compensation is now being delivered. He makes the important point that 1,000 new claimants join the compensation scheme every week. We are grappling with that pressure as well as delivering on the scheme to existing claimants. In Scotland, we have delivered £28 million so far, and people in coal mining communities there appreciate that.

Mr. Eric Illsley: As I represent a constituency in the diocese of Wakefield, may I inform my hon. Friend that I am extremely pleased with the Government's delivery both of compensation for

respiratory diseases and vibration white finger and on equal value claims? As my hon. Friend knows, one of the problems in relation to vibration white finger is the refusal of RJB Mining to accept liability for certain claims applying to periods of service in the company after privatisation. Can my hon. Friend confirm that the Government, with the solicitors' claims group, are looking into that under the handling agreement, to see whether the problem can be resolved?

Mr. Hain: Yes, we are. My hon. Friend speaks with the authority of an ex-miner. Conservative Members would not recognise a mine if they fell down one. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, whether about equal value claims or about the decision which we recently announced that there will now he no claw-back of benefit deductions from compensation paid out to 99 per cent. of claimants. That is yet another move forward that we have made in recent months.

Oral Answers to Questions — Universal Bank

Mr. Crispin Blunt: What progress has been made in agreeing a memorandum of understanding with banks concerning the universal bank. [159071]

The Minister for Competitiveness (Mr. Alan Johnson): Discussions with the banks are at an advanced stage. I hope that they will be resolved shortly.

Mr. Blunt: I cannot say that I am particularly grateful to the Minister for that answer. In January, the Secretary of State said at DTI questions:
I am confident that within a few weeks we will sign a memorandum of understanding with those banks".—[Official Report, 18 January 2001; Vol. 361, c. 496.]
However, in March, in response to a written question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat—Amory), the Department gave precisely the same answer as the Minister has just given, and stated:
Discussions with the banks are at an advanced stage."—[Official Report, 12 March 2001; Vol. 364, c. 456W.]
It is about time we had some answers from the Government, not least in view of the report produced by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which states that the Committee
can appreciate concern expressed as to the source of funding. In evidence to us a recurring annual figure of around £150 million was mentioned by the Post Office. That is on the low side. The back office costs will indeed be substantial.
Will he tell us just how much this will cost the taxpayer? The House has a right to know.

Mr. Johnson: We are in discussions with the 11 major financial institutions, 10 banks and a building society—

Mr. Eric Forth: Still!

Mr. Johnson: Yes, still. We are doing so because we have something that is worth arguing for. They are all talking constructively with us about setting up universal banking services that will allow pensioners and benefit recipients not only to draw their money in cash, in full, every week at the post office, but to access network banking there. That is an important development for the


Post Office and in the war against financial exclusion. We will continue to work on this matter over the weekend—apart from Monday, of course, which is a universal bank holiday.

Dr. Vincent Cable: Will the Minister confirm the significance of the concession that he is reported to have made to the banks, and to Halifax in particular, on not allowing branded bank accounts to be opened in Post Office branches? Does not that mean that the very large number of financially excluded people in inner-city and remote rural areas who do not have access to a bank branch will be restricted to the limited facilities of the card account and will not have the bill-paying accounts that they had anticipated?

Mr. Johnson: No; the hon. Gentleman is wrong. The discussions are subject to commercial confidentiality. When they are concluded, they will be revealed. Our aim is that people will not have to go to banks to open their accounts. They can start the process at their post office without needing to visit a bank. A very important point that was made in the Cruickshank report is that many people feel inhibited by having to go the banks, whereas they trust the post office.
I can assure the hon. Gentleman and all hon. Members that the universal banking services will be a major step forward, and that the very people whom he mentions—the socially and financially excluded—will be able to have the benefits of direct debit, which we assess at up to £200 usage a year, as a result of being able to access those services.

Ballistic Missile Defence

Mr. Francis Maude: (by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Government policy towards ballistic missile defence.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Robin Cook): When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister met President Bush at Camp David, he stressed the importance of taking forward proposals for missile defence through close consultation with allies and through dialogue with Russia.
On Tuesday, President Bush made a statement—[Interruption.] If I may say so, this is a serious matter that I am endeavouring to take seriously. On Tuesday, President Bush made a statement on his Administration's plans on how to proceed with missile defence. We warmly welcome the strong emphasis placed by President Bush on consultation with close allies. We look forward to discussions next week with the high-level team that he is sending to Europe.
We also welcome the commitment to dialogue with Russia in order to develop a new co-operative relationship that is based on openness and mutual confidence. President Putin has also demonstrated his concern about the missile threat from rogue states, and his security adviser recently briefed NATO on Russian proposals for missile defence. We will encourage both the United States and Russia to have constructive dialogue to reach agreement on how to tackle the problem that both have identified.
We also warmly welcome the commitment by President Bush to further cuts in nuclear weapons. We want nuclear arms reduction to be a feature of the new relationship that the United States seeks with Russia.
It should be stressed that President Bush's speech was a commitment to a future goal. The technology for missile defence will take some years to develop and the United States has yet to confirm which technical option it will pursue. Nor do we yet know the diplomatic context of any final decision, such as the potential for agreement with Russia.
However, we must recognise the reality that there is a growing challenge of missile proliferation. A number of states, of mutual concern to the US and the UK, are developing ballistic missile technology. At Camp David our two leaders agreed:
We need to obstruct and deter these new threats.
In the years that it will take for missile defence to be developed, we will work closely with the US, both to reduce proliferation of ballistic missile technology and to enhance security against those ballistic missiles.

Mr. Maude: Ballistic missile defence is a subject of intense interest and concern throughout the House. Yesterday, the Prime Minister deliberately equivocated when questioned on the subject in the Chamber by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham). Not 10 minutes later, his official spokesman said that missile defence was a good idea. The House is entitled to feel extremely angry that it is treated in that way.
Next week, a delegation from Washington comes to London to discuss precisely this matter. Given the overwhelming importance of the issue, and the absolute necessity of the British Government speaking with a single and authoritative voice, will the Foreign Secretary now repeat, word for word, what the Prime Minister's official spokesman said yesterday? How otherwise can Britain expect to have influence with either America or our European partners? Does he believe that British people should have less protection against missile attack than people in America

Mr. Cook: I am entirely happy to endorse everything that was said by the Prime Minister in the House yesterday when he stressed that it is impossible to give a firm answer until we have firm details. The Opposition's position is that, although we do not yet know whether the system will be sea-based or land-based, whether it will attempt to hit an incoming missile in the boost phase or in the re-entry phase, or whether it will be done with or without agreement, they know the answer that they would give. That is a betrayal of the national interest and of any influence that one may hope to have on the proposal.
Yes, I do think—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Minister reply.

Mr. Cook: I do think that it is a good thing that the United States President should be able to say to the United States people that they are secure against any ballistic attack. It may or may not be that missile defence will play a part in that, but, as the Prime Minister's official spokesman said yesterday, nothing is inevitable and no answer can be given by Britain until we know the details; and, in that context, the position taken by the Government to look at the detail and the international context and to take a decision in the national interest compares responsibly and favourably with the position taken by the Opposition, who have adopted an attitude that plainly means that they do not expect to be in government, do not have any intention of taking a responsible approach to the issue, and would put their own party prejudice first rather than the national interest.

Mr. Donald Anderson: Last August, the all-party Select Committee on Foreign Affairs unanimously agreed a report in which we urged the Government to make it clear to the US Administration that they should not necessarily assume unqualified UK co-operation in national missile defence and urged the Government to articulate Britain's strong concerns about NMD.
The Government, in their reply in August 2000, said, in terms, that they value the stability that the anti-ballistic missile treaty provides. Is that still the Government's position? What does consultation mean in practice? What is the agenda? Will my right hon. Friend say clearly that the position taken by the Leader of the Opposition, giving a blank cheque—a yes—to whatever the US Administration says, is absurd?

Mr. Cook: On the anti-ballistic missile treaty, we have constantly stressed to the United States Administration the importance of taking forward any amendment that they wish to make to their agreements with Russia by agreement and through dialogue.
The speech by President Bush was welcomed in Moscow yesterday by my colleague, Foreign Minister Ivanov, who said that he was pleased that the United States
did not intend to take unilateral steps.
He welcomed the offer of dialogue as beginning
an era of strategic stability consultations".
We are not a party to the anti-ballistic missile treaty; the parties to it are the United States and Russia. They must resolve between them the way in which they proceed with the new relationship that President Bush has offered. We have a legitimate interest in its progress through co-operation, not confrontation, and by agreement, not unilaterally.
My right hon. Friend is right that members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs take their duties seriously and consider carefully the impact of their words. I wish that Conservative Front-Bench Members considered as carefully as the Conservative members of the Committee the impact on the rest of the world of the comments that they make for party reasons.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: I apologise for having to leave shortly. I have a long-standing commitment at the Royal United Services Institute.
No matter how the Foreign Secretary describes the matter, there was a substantial difference in emphasis between what the Prime Minister told the House and the official spokesman's comments to journalists within an hour of Prime Minister's questions. It is highly unsatisfactory to reveal a change of emphasis in policy in that way; there is no getting away from that.
Should not we be anxious about the absence from President Bush's proposals of any understanding of their impact on other treaties and agreements on the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons? What store can we set by consultation that takes place after rather than before a decision has been made?

Mr. Cook: I say to my right hon. and learned Friend—[Interruption.] I extend the hand of friendship to my right hon. and learned Friend. [Interruption.] I assure Conservative Members that I shall not describe them in the same way.

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is too much noise. Opposition Front-Bench Members wanted a statement.

Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk): We are enjoying it.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman may be enjoying it, but there is other business before the House. If there is more such behaviour, I shall bring discussion on the private notice question to an end.

Mr. Cook: There is no doubt that the United States Administration have made a commitment to proceed with missile defence. However, a range of decisions remain to be taken, and it is important to consult on them. I am confident that all our colleagues in Europe will give the same advice: it is important to proceed through dialogue and agreement, not only with us but with Russia.
I am glad that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) gives me the chance to put the record straight about what was said at 4 pm yesterday. [Interruption.] As Conservative Members are so interested in that, I shall describe the Prime Minister's official spokesman's words in full. His statement and what was said in the House are identical. When it was put to him that we would ultimately go along with whatever the United Stated asked us to do, he disagreed, said that nothing was inevitable and that
Our decision would depend on the detail of the US plans—something which President Bush clearly understood and accepted.
That is precisely what the Prime Minister told the House yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Tony Benn: It is clear that the Government want to be cautious about this matter before polling day, as they know that there is widespread opposition to it world wide because of the fear of a new arms race, which could involve this country. The United States supplies us with nuclear weapons, which we pretend are independent. Those weapons are dependent upon the American satellite system and, therefore, on the basis of past experience, British Governments do not go against the decisions of the President. Did the Foreign Secretary hear that Admiral Eugene Carroll—a distinguished retired American admiral—came to the House recently and said that if the scheme went ahead, he hoped that there would be a lot of Greenham commons and a large-scale peace movement? My right hon. Friend, as a passionate and articulate supporter of CND, will understand the importance of such a campaign.

Mr. Cook: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his helpful intervention. I can assure him that the Government will be cautious, responsible and realistic throughout the whole period after we are re-elected on polling day. That is precisely why we are taking a measured and considered approach to the question, totally unlike the Conservative party. However, I say to my right hon. Friend that we are the closest ally and one of the oldest friends of the United States. Plainly, that will be reflected in any judgment that we make if we are asked to be helpful.

Mr. John Greenway: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the early warning radar station at RAF Fylingdales in my constituency has played a crucial role in maintaining peace and security in Britain and the west for more than 40 years? Is he aware that the majority in north Yorkshire overwhelmingly support RAF Fylingdales? However, some of my constituents are alarmed at the more sensational suggestions as to what ballistic missile defence might mean for RAF Fylingdales. Will he take this opportunity to confirm that although no definitive proposals have been put to the Government by America, the clear intention is that the role of Fylingdales will remain limited to early warning radar stations and that there is no question of siting missiles or interceptors in north Yorkshire?

Mr. Cook: At no stage has anybody involved in the debate—either in the United States or Europe—suggested that interceptor missiles be based either in Britain or anywhere in continental Europe. The hon. Gentleman is right; no precise proposal has been put to us and no


decision has been taken on what the response would be, or indeed where any such facility would be based. It will not necessarily be Fylingdales.

Dr. Phyllis Starkey: I welcome the stress that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have put on the need to insist on dialogue between the United States Administration, the Government, our other allies and Russia before the proposals are confirmed. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the current framework of arms control treaties has played an important part in the security of the United Kingdom and will continue to do so? Are there not much easier ways of dealing with the suggested missile threat from supposed states of concern, rather than the current proposals? In particular, the steps taken by the EU to improve dialogue with North Korea are an obvious way of dealing with that missile threat. Finally, given the extreme concern shown by a large number of people across the UK about the proposals and their possible effect on UK security, will he join me in condemning the levity of Conservative Members? Obviously they are thinking only of party political issues and not the security of this country.

Mr. Cook: Mr. Speaker has already reminded the House that we are discussing this question because the official Opposition tabled it. As they went to the lengths of tabling it, I would have expected them to have made a serious contribution on a serious global issue, not simply to have tried to exploit for party prejudice and party interest an issue that should and will be dealt with in the national interest by the Government.
My hon. Friend is right that there are other ways in which to handle the threat of missile proliferation, although I do not know that it is necessary for us to choose between them. They all have a contribution to make. Whether or not missile defence goes ahead, I agree that it is important that we do what we can for rapprochement on the Korean peninsula and it is important that we tighten the technology regimes against the spread of missile technology. I assure her that we shall continue that work and that, as I said at my meeting with Colin Powell in March, we shall ensure that we work closely with the United States to achieve those goals as well.

Mr. Andrew Tyrie: We must clarify whether there is any difference of view between the Prime Minister's press spokesman and the Prime Minister himself. I have here an extract from the lobby briefing, which says:
Pressed as to whether we believed missile defence, broadly speaking, was a good idea, the PMOS said broadly, yes it was … It was now the Prime Minister and the British Government's responsibility to look at any specific policy questions which might relate to the UK.
In other words, there is clear agreement in principle and it is a question of looking at the details. It is difficult to place any other construction on what the Prime Minister's official spokesman said. That being the case, will the Foreign Secretary say whether it can therefore be assumed that the Government do not consider the United States proposals to be in breach of the 1972 ABM treaty?

Mr. Cook: The answer to the last point is that President Bush himself has said that the United States is constrained

by the ABM treaty. After all, that is why he is seeking dialogue with Russia and why we are urging both sides to find a way in which they can go forward.
In reference to the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks, at risk of wearying the House by repeating what we have already said, that is precisely what the Prime Minister said yesterday and what I have said today. This is an issue that we are obliged to look at. We will look at it responsibly. We will look at it with the national interest in mind, unlike the Conservative party, which is looking at it irresponsibly and without the national interest in mind.

Mr. Ivan Lewis: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the decision is of immense strategic importance to this country, that party politics has no part to play in such a decision, which is related to the national interest, and that the British people would expect a responsible Government to wait for the detail of any such proposals before reaching a decision that will have wide-ranging implications not only for this country, but for the international community?

Mr. Cook: I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Those members of the public who are watching this exchange can make up their own minds as to which side is engaged seriously in the issue and which side has treated it as a matter of levity and party prejudice. They can also resolve for themselves whether it makes more sense to know firmly what we are being asked to answer or to give the answer now, whatever the question may be, as Conservative Members are doing.

Mr. William Ross: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that, once upon a time, this nation gave facilities to the Americans to bomb Libya and that the people in the United Kingdom who paid the highest price for that bombing were the people of Northern Ireland, who suffered because a large number of weapons were imported from Libya? Given that such consequences flowed from that decision, can we have an assurance from him that this country will fall well within any protective umbrella should missile defence be created?

Mr. Cook: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman such an assurance at present. Indeed, it would be odd if I were able to do so, given that there is no precise missile defence system yet proposed by the United States. However, I can assure him and the House that, obviously, that issue will be a major factor in consultations that we have over the coming months.

Mr. Malcolm Savidge: The Foreign Secretary has already said that we are not party to the ABM treaty, but does he agree that we were a vital party to the nuclear non-proliferation review conference last year at which it was agreed that maintaining and strengthening that treaty was part of the agreement to which all the countries involved signed up? Surely, therefore, we have an important interest in ensuring that missile defence does not undermine the whole non-proliferation and arms control regime.
Is not it vital that the United States engage in discussions not only with Russia, but with China and other countries? Should not we consider the suggestion made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations that we


should call a conference of all countries, including those that are not party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to discuss how best to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons?

Mr. Cook: I fully agree with my hon. Friend's support for the text of the NPT review conference. Indeed, the British Government were influential in securing the agreement on that text. Our problem is that the countries of greatest concern in relation to the proliferation of missile technology are outwith the NPT regime. I absolutely agree with him that if we could strengthen that regime by bringing those countries into it, a lot of the tension and anxiety would be removed from the United States' debate. We can all continue to press those countries to sign up, and to point out to them that if they do not do so, there will unavoidably be consequences. However, the United States has to take account of the countries that have not signed up, and continue to develop the means of missile delivery of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
None of that is inconsistent with the further cuts in nuclear offensive missiles to which we committed ourselves in that text, and I welcome the fact that President Bush's speech on Tuesday repeated that commitment on behalf of the United States. I hope that he will be able to take it forward through bilateral dialogue with Russia.

Mr. Christopher Gill: Are not the divisions in the Labour party and the hard left anti-defence lobby that sits on the Benches behind him the real reasons why the Foreign Secretary will not say whether he, in principle, favours missile defence?

Mr. Cook: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government will take a collective decision when the time comes, in which we will all participate. The reason that we are not saying now what our answer will be when we are asked a question is that we are in government, we are responsible and realistic, and we want to know what the question is first. The fact that Conservative Members are prepared to answer the question without knowing what it is demonstrates that they do not really ever expect to be in government.

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle: Can I tell my right hon. Friend how welcome his reaffirmation is of the Prime Minister's position, as set out in the House yesterday? Will my right hon. Friend also join me in condemning the Conservative party for once again showing its knee-jerk enthusiasm for as yet non-existent proposals purely and simply for electioneering purposes?

Mr. Cook: I do not think that anybody studying the text of these exchanges or watching them this afternoon will come to the conclusion that a single thing has been said by Conservative Members that would enhance the security of Britain, or strengthen the security of her alliance.

Dr. Julian Lewis: Does the Foreign Secretary recall—on the day on which he is possibly making his last outing as Foreign Secretary—those happy, carefree times when he used to describe it as nonsense on

stilts for Britain to pretend to be a nuclear power? Does he recall his reactions when the American President of the day originally proposed ballistic missile defence? Will he accept the sympathy of those Conservative Members who have consistently supported nuclear deterrence for his position now, as he finds himself attacked from his own Back Benches by people who stick to the views that he used to stick to but has now abandoned? Does he realise that many of us understand why he has recently taken to lowering his voice when he answers these embarrassing questions?

Mr. Cook: I am happy to say to the hon. Gentleman that I can resist the temptation to accept his sympathy in any circumstances whatsoever. I invite him to reflect on the proposal that I understand him to be supporting, which is that we should support missile defence. Will he reflect on the fact that missile defence is a clear statement that the many people in the United States who support it no longer have the faith in nuclear deterrence in which he still seems to be mired?

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Bush got elected with the help of a massive amount of money from the defence industries, principally in America, and that he fiddled his way to victory on the back of that money? Is he aware that now is payback time? I suggest that he should be very careful about how the Government tread in the next few weeks. I believe that the Tories are as wrong on this issue as they are on the economy, and on almost every other political issue.

Mr. Cook: I have no problem in assenting to my hon. Friend's proposition that the Conservatives are wrong on a range of issues. I find it startling that there are still Conservative Members who appear to believe that the Government's real success is not in substance, but in spin. The reason why the Conservatives are in opposition is that they presided over the two worst economic recessions in British history, and the reason why they will stay in opposition is that this Government have presided over a sound, healthy, growing economy. Those are issues of substance, not of spin.

Mr. Crispin Blunt: All hon. Members will agree on the importance of this issue, but when we are reduced to considering how effective Mr. Bremner is as a parody of Government and when Downing street is acting as a parody of Bremner, is it not about time that the Government stood aside for people who will deal with the issue in a serious fashion?

Mr. Cook: I am conscious that we are appearing in the House of Commons now, and seeking to debate these matters seriously. I will not enter into any studio comedy with the hon. Gentleman.

Ms Oona King: May I record the grave concern felt by many of my constituents, and shared by me, about missile proliferation and the threat posed by rogue states? Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that the Government's position remains that we will await a firm proposal from the Americans before deciding on the merits of any such proposal? Will he put clear blue water—or clear red water—between the parties, by confirming that we will not do what the Conservatives


have done and blindly rush in to support any proposal that the Americans come up with before they have even decided on a proposal?

Mr. Cook: I am happy to confirm that the answer to both questions is yes. We will of course consider the details that are put to us—it would be irresponsible to do otherwise—and, as the Prime Minister's official spokesman said yesterday, our answer is not inevitable.

Mr. Francis Maude: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take the point of order after the Business Question.

Business of the House

Mrs. Angela Browning: Will the Leader of the House please give the business for the coming week?

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): The business for the coming week is as follows.

MONDAY 7 MAY—The House will not be sitting.

TUESDAY 8 MAY—Motion to approve Ways and Means Resolution on the Finance Bill.

Remaining stages of the Private Security Industry Bill [Lords].

WEDNESDAY 9 MAY—Remaining stages of the International Criminal Court Bill [Lords].

THURSDAY 10 MAY—Opposition Day [9th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

FRIDAY 11 MAY—Private Members' Bills.

The provisional business for the following week will include:

MONDAY 14 MAY—Remaining stages of the Rating (Former Agricultural Premises and Rural Shops) Bill.

Consideration of Lords amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill.

TUESDAY 15 MAY—Opposition Day [10th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

WEDNESDAY 16 MAY—Debate on Defence on a motion for Adjournment of the House.

THURSDAY 17 MAY—The Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration at 4 o'clock.

FRIDAY 18 MAY—Private Members' Bills.

Mrs. Browning: I thank the Leader of the House for announcing what will clearly be a fun-packed week—possibly the last week of the current Parliament. It has been a fun Parliament for some. The Government began, four years ago, with a party in Downing street, and proceeded to that great party down at the dome at the change of the century; but, as with all parties, they have left behind a lot of debris. I wonder whether some of that debris can be cleared up in the coming week's business.
One important fact is that the Government have yet to devote any Government time to a full debate on foot and mouth on the Floor of the House. There have been statements and one is to follow but, surely, given the nature of the crisis and the fact that the Prime Minister has taken personal control of it, one could have at least expected the Government to allocate time to discuss foot and mouth next week.
There are other matters of great importance that I hope the Leader of the House will consider fitting in before the end of next week. The Government have made statements and indeed have set up a taskforce to help to support businesses not directly involved in agriculture, but there is a growing problem for all the businesses that have appealed for a temporary reduction in their rating assessments.
On 6 April, the Paymaster General informed the House in a written answer that there were no fewer than 23,000 new applications as at 6 April. It does not seem that those are being processed; indeed, the Treasury has been unable to give up-to-date figures. I hope that the Leader of the House will find time for the Paymaster General to answer questions in the House on how those applications are to be expedited.
We have still not had an annual debate on small business, which the Government promised when they came to glorious victory in 1997. Nor have there been any statements on the Floor of the House on, for example, many matters to do with procedure. The fact that we have just had a private notice question based on what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister's questions yesterday and what was said in contradiction subsequently by his press officer surely merits some debate before the end of the Parliament; and what about a statement from the Government about their so-called modernisation programme, which has been inflicted on the House during the Parliament?
The Government have failed to reintroduce the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) (No.2) Bill despite its being a high priority for them and being announced in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech last December. Has that Bill now been taken off the party invitation list? The Government have only published a draft transport Bill, even though they promised to develop a fully integrated public transport system. I wonder whether the Leader of the House could tell us exactly what the intention is so that the House can question Transport Ministers on that subject.
There has been no legislation to enforce the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development convention on bribery, which makes it a criminal offence for a United Kingdom national to bribe a foreign public official. On that subject, not much time appears to have been allocated for the House to discuss very important matters that have been considered by Select Committees in respect of the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson) and the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), for whom the party has been so exciting that he has had to go home and spend a bit of time getting over it. It is important that such matters be discussed on the Floor of the House. I hope that the Leader of the House will assure us that those important matters will be tidied up before the party is over at the end of next week because, clearly, for the Government, the party will be well and truly over.

Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Lady complains that there has been no debate in Government time on the foot and mouth outbreak, which, if I recall correctly, first came to light in February, so we are talking about a comparatively short period, during which there have been, as she rightly acknowledged, extensive statements. I remind her that we went through at least two years, if not three or four, when the Conservative party was in government without any debate in Government time on health, which is an on-going issue and which was in crisis at the time. It is not unusual for there to be pressure on Government time, but, by contrast with the Conservative party, we have made extensive statements covering those issues.
The hon. Lady raises a valid point about the handling of applications with regard to rate relief. I believe that we have Treasury questions next Thursday, but in any case I will draw her remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I had not heard the concerns that the hon. Lady expressed, but clearly it is a matter of some interest. We already have in mind the issue of a small business debate.
As for the hon. Lady's remarks on procedure, I am not quite sure to what she is referring, although she complains about the handling of statements. It is a matter of record that, in this Parliament, on average, the Government have made a statement every two sitting days. We have certainly made substantially more statements—just as we have taken substantially more questions at Prime Minister's Question Time—than the previous, Conservative Government made. I therefore do not think that it lies in the mouths of Conservative Members to complain about that matter.
The hon. Lady then gave a list of matters that she felt should be debated, including some Select Committee reports. She treated us again to her views on the Modernisation Committee, but I remind the House that a consequence of the work of that Committee is that we now have four to five times as much time for debating Select Committee reports, and more time for Back Benchers than was available under the previous Government.
In her list of matters not covered, the hon. Lady also included a draft transport Bill that she wanted to discuss. I am not quite sure where she was last year, but it is my recollection that we had a Transport Bill which became the Transport Act 2000.
As for the party being over, it sounds very much to me like the hon. Lady's party is definitely over.

Mr. David Winnick: For all those who are genuinely concerned with the national interest, should it not be a matter for congratulation that foot and mouth is now well under control? Everyone involved should be congratulated on what has been done. May I also make what I hope will be seen as a helpful suggestion, relating to what we have just been discussing? Would it not be much better for statements on very serious policy matters to be made by the relevant Minister and not outside the House? Not only would that save a lot of perhaps unnecessary work, but the Opposition would of course have less to exploit.

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the whole House should take pleasure—although I am not sure that everyone does—in the very considerable success in handling what has undoubtedly been a very difficult outbreak. I think that most sensible people congratulate all those who have been involved on the enormous work and effort that they have put in—often with a huge amount of second-guessing. Action that was demanded one week was criticised the next, and a great deal of undeserved abuse was heaped on the unfortunate heads of those who were doing most of the work to tackle the impact of the disease. My hon. Friend is entirely right about that.
As for how statements are handled, I hope that my hon. Friend will be aware that my right hon. Friend the Agriculture Minister hopes to make a statement shortly. Additionally, he answered a written parliamentary question on the matter this morning.

Mr. Paul Tyler: Does the Leader of the House accept that Ministers must be accountable to the House rather than to the media for the actions of Government? Does she accept that, despite what the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has just said, there are still very real concerns—in my part of the country, if not in his—about the devastation left by the foot and mouth outbreak? There is therefore absolutely no room for complacency about the outbreak; nor is there any room for complacency about the way in which the Government have handled the whole episode.
May I draw the right hon. Lady's attention specifically to the fact that there are still real problems with co-ordination of the Government's activities in their different forms to deal with the outbreak? That is why, on several previous occasions, I have asked that the Prime Minister—as he has insisted that he had to take personal charge of the whole exercise—should himself come to the House and answer questions on the co-ordination of Government activity to deal with it.
May I particularly draw the right hon. Lady's attention to the problems that obviously will arise if we do not have a swift public inquiry into the matter? I accept that she may well be able to say that the previous Government refused a public inquiry into the BSE scandal, but two wrongs do not make a right, and that is not an excuse for inaction now.
Specifically, we want to know whether the Agriculture Minister was right when, on 27 March, he told the House that entry into this country—presumably through the ports—of the foot and mouth virus had still to be examined and established. Is that true? If it is, why have we had no further statement on the matter?
Moreover, why have the efforts that my colleagues and I have put into trying to see what is happening at our entry ports been blocked at every stage, to the extent that civil servants themselves have told me that we have been given the Whitehall runaround? We have been wanting to go and see what checks are being made at our ports into illegal meat imports, and we have been told by the Association of Port Health Authorities that large quantities of such meat are coming into this country. Why have we been blocked from seeing exactly what is happening, and when will we have the remit for that public inquiry?

Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman says that matters should be reported to the House. Perhaps he failed to hear me say to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) that a parliamentary question was answered this morning. He will know that successive Speakers have ruled that that is a perfectly acceptable way of making an announcement. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food intends to make a statement later.
I wholeheartedly endorse, as does everyone, the idea that although, to nearly everyone's relief, the disease is apparently on a downward trajectory, there is no cause for complacency. Indeed, nobody feels complacent.

The remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North were timely, in that a great deal of abuse has been heaped on the heads of those who have been attempting to deal with the outbreak, not least the officials, and it is right for us to place on the record our real gratitude for their efforts.
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he frequently asks for the Prime Minister to make a statement on this, that or the other.
The issue of what inquiry should be held, and in what form, will continue to be considered. Perhaps in calling for further statements the hon. Gentleman has overlooked the fact that some of the issues may become a matter for prosecution, which always means that what is said in public must be handled with caution. He will have the opportunity to put many of these questions to my right hon. Friend later.

Mr. Kevin Barron: Can we have a statement next week on the slow progress of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill? It completed its stages in the House of Commons on 13 February, about 11 weeks ago, had its First Reading in the other place the following day and then took some five weeks to get its Second Reading, since when there has been no progress whatever. Along with many of my hon. Friends, I am concerned about the situation. We made a commitment in the Labour party manifesto to ban tobacco advertising. Can we have a statement to find out whether the Bill will make further progress, especially considering the rumours that abound suggesting that we may be embarking on a general election campaign very shortly?

Mrs. Beckett: Of course I understand the concerns that my hon. Friend expresses. He has been a strong and ardent campaigner on the issue for many years. He will know, however, that there is a great deal of business in the other place and that the Government do not control the business there: it is a matter for that House itself to decide what business to take and how long to spend on it. There are always problems and pressures.
My hon. Friend will know that, in the event of any change in business, there are long-established parliamentary conventions on how the issues may be handled. I am not aware of any reason to suppose that those conventions will not be observed.

Sir Teddy Taylor: Will the Leader of the House find time next week for a debate on the financial situation faced by hospices that care for the dying, of which we have 102 in this country? Information just published shows that, over the past three years, the proportion of hospices' funding that is public has gone down from more than 35 to just under 30 per cent. Will she pay particular attention to the independent report that has just been published showing that half our hospices now face serious financial problems? If we had not raised a great deal of additional money over the past year, Southend, too, could have been in that position. Does she agree that this is an urgent and important matter that deserves parliamentary attention?

Mrs. Beckett: I am not aware of the report to which the hon. Gentleman refers, nor do I know whether the change in percentage may not, at least in part, be due to


the substantial efforts made to raise funds for hospices from the private sector. The whole House strongly applauds the excellent work done in hospices and would not want it to be undermined in any way. I will certainly draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, but I fear that I cannot find time for a special debate on them in the near future.

Mr. Andrew Miller: Those of us who were present in Westminster Hall on 11 July 1996 were afforded the great honour of listening to one of the greatest statesmen of our time address both Houses of Parliament; I refer, of course, to Nelson Mandela. May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 643, which seeks to commemorate that event?
[That this House notes the historic importance of the speech delivered to both Houses by President Mandela and of EDM 1155, tabled on 11th July 1996, supported on a cross party basis; and calls upon the House authorities to install a permanent reminder of the occasion by the setting of a brass plaque on the steps of Westminster Hall.]
I realise that the solution to that request is not entirely in the gift of my right hon. Friend, but I would be grateful if she would bring it to the attention of the Lord Chancellor, who is one of the people involved.
I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you will recognise the sentiments expressed in the motion on a cross-party basis, as you are one of those able to take action on the matter.

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is partly right in saying that I do not have entire responsibility in the matter, because I do not have any responsibility for what happens in Westminster Hall, which rests with the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker. However, I fully recognise the important point that my hon. Friend makes. The tremendous warmth of the cross-party welcome for Nelson Mandela was evident on the occasion that my hon. Friend mentions, and I am confident that those who have responsibility for the matter will hear his remarks with sympathy.

Sir Peter Emery: Does the right hon. Lady agree that there is no great pressure of massively important legislation next week and that therefore—if necessary after 10 o'clock—the Government should bring forward the recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body on the new level of salary for Members of Parliament? They will not affect me, but they should not be held back until after the election by people who fear that voting in favour of them might affect their position at the polls. One section of the House will be affected—those who are retiring or who are defeated at the election and have only a low level of pension. That pension is based on Members' final salary when they leave the House, so to hold back a recommendation based on what has been supposedly earned over the past three years is to be unfair to a host of Members of Parliament in terms of their pensions. The Government should have enough strength to overcome any opposition and get on with it.

Mrs. Beckett: Although the right hon. Gentleman says that there is no pressure of legislation next week, the

House will in fact discuss some very important legislation. He will know that the issue has been raised with me, and I fear that I cannot undertake to bring the matter forward in the near future. I shall take the opportunity to say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is characteristic of his many years of service in the House that he should raise the issue on behalf of other people.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: Has the Leader of the House had time to read early-day motion 619?
[That this House believes that the Halifax, Yorkshire's biggest financial company, must keep its headquarters in Halifax, the town whose name it takes; does not accept that all major financial centres in the UK should be located only in capital cities; notes that Leeds is a growing centre of financial excellence and that if the headquarters are moved to Edinburgh this would be a major blow to the Yorkshire Region as a place in which to invest and locate.]
It has been signed by 87 Members and opposes the relocation to Scotland of the headquarters of the Halifax bank, in the event of a merger between it and the Bank of Scotland. Feelings are running so high in my constituency against such a relocation that the Halifax Evening Courier produced a special edition to oppose it. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Government for a statement on the issue, which is vital to investment in Halifax and the wider Yorkshire region?

Mrs. Beckett: I understand my hon. Friend's clearly expressed concern and the Evening Courier deserves praise for ensuring that an issue of such importance to the local community is raised in that way. My hon. Friend and others also deserve praise for the way in which they have raised the issue. We are keen for organisations to take factors such as the impact on local communities into account when they make their decisions. I fear, however, that those decisions are ultimately a commercial matter for the company, although I will draw my hon. Friend's remarks to the attention of any of my right hon. Friends who have any standing on the issue.

Mr. Peter Brooke: Historically, the Government have purported to support the City of London (Ward Elections) Bill, but Government Whips last night were actively discouraging Ministers from voting for further progress on the Bill.

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: If only that were true.

Mr. Brooke: Effectively, that prevented the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), who heard the debate, from stating the Government's current position with regard to the Bill. In the circumstances, may we have a statement on the Government's position?

Mrs. Beckett: With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know has long campaigned on this matter on behalf of his constituents, he will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) say, "If only that were true."

Mr. Mackinlay: In the period of quarantine that will prevail during the general election and until the following


Queen's Speech, will it be possible for the Government to reflect on the City of London (Ward Elections) Bill and decide that it should not be resuscitated? If a motion on that matter is put to the House, should not it be subject to a free vote? There is no majority in the House in favour of this squalid little Bill, and the sooner it is consigned to the dustbin, the better.

Mrs. Beckett: With respect to my hon. Friend, the Bill is private business. Its resuscitation is therefore not a matter for the Government. It has always been subject to a free vote, precisely because it is private business. That will no doubt remain the case if it is reintroduced.

Sir Sydney Chapman: Will the Leader of the House find time next week for a debate on the extraordinary actions of Barnet council, which is under joint Labour and Liberal Democrat control? Last year, it targeted the half of the borough in which it thought that its greatest support lay, and sent a letter encouraging postal voting to every householder. At the beginning of the year, it promised to do the same for the other half of the borough. It printed the letters, but then took the political decision not to take any further action. Will the right hon. Lady at least condemn what is political gerrymandering of the worst type?

Mrs. Beckett: I am not precisely familiar with the situation in Barnet to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but, in the light of what he has said, I wonder whether there was a great deal of criticism of the council for taking the steps that it did, and whether that has anything to do with his question.

Mr. Win Griffiths: Bearing in mind the expeditious way in which the House has dealt with business this week, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate next week on today's announcement by Corus, which makes it clear that the company never had any intention of changing its plans to sack 6,000 workers in the United Kingdom? Such a debate would give us the opportunity to show that Plaid Cymru was more concerned to back Corus in this matter than to support the Government's attempts to get the company back on track and keep workers in jobs. It would also give the House a chance to show how effectively the Government have responded to the Corus debacle—for example, they have provided some £66 million in Wales to try to ensure that steelworkers receive adequate compensation and the opportunity for new jobs.

Mrs. Beckett: I share my hon. Friend's view that it would be desirable to find time for such a debate, as it would make plain how much the Government have done to try to help people in that difficult situation. It would also expose those more concerned with scoring political points. However, I fear that I cannot undertake to find time for such a debate next week.

Mr. Stephen Day: The right hon. Lady is assiduous is carrying out her duties as Leader of the House, and enjoys the respect of hon. Members. However, I hope she will agree that it is wrong that major policy announcements should be made by the Prime Minister's press secretary when, 10 minutes before that announcement, the Prime Minister had steadfastly refused

to do make the same announcement in the House. The same is true of announcements by any press secretary and any Minister. The right hon. Lady has always stood up for the House's rights; will she do so on this occasion by agreeing with me?

Mrs. Beckett: That is a good try, but no such major announcement of a change in policy was made. That has already been made plain, and I remind the hon. Gentleman that the issue was aired earlier today.

Mr. Gwyn Prosser: Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on asylum? That would give the House an opportunity to discuss the success of the Government's Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, particularly the success of the civil penalties, which have had a dramatic effect on the numbers of illegal immigrants coming into the port of Dover, and of the accelerated process, which means that the backlog of unheard cases is at a 10-year low? In addition, the success of the dispersal system has meant that since last April hardly a single new asylum seeker has been placed in the port of Dover.
Is my right hon. Friend encouraged by the comments of the Conservative leader of Kent county council, who told Radio 5 just last week:
I think the dispersal system is working well"?

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is quite correct. I am encouraged to learn that the leader of Kent county council is, at least on this occasion, more in touch with the real world than those who represent his party in this House. My hon. Friend is entirely right to identify that there is merit in paying attention to the accelerated process in dealing with the backlog. I find it hard to keep a straight face when I hear Conservative Members talk about their record on asylum, when people waited years and years, not least in my constituency, without any decision being taken. My hon. Friend is also quite correct to identify this as an area in which Government policy has tackled a problem of enormous consequences that we inherited. I fear, however, that I cannot undertake to find time for a special debate on it next week.

Mr. Eric Forth: Is it not time that we had a proper debate in the House about the real role of Alastair Campbell in the Government? Yesterday, the Prime Minister waffled about missile defence. Just after that, we are told, Mr. Campbell gave a clear statement on the Government's policy on missile defence. Today, we have had the unedifying spectacle of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs being not quite unable to deny what Alastair Campbell had said but trying to waltz around it in his gnomic way. Can we please have a debate in which it will be made clear beyond all doubt what the role of this man, Alastair Campbell, is in Government? Is he running the Government, does he speak for the Government, does he decide policy? Why is a Secretary of State unable to deny to the House what Alastair Campbell is reported as having said the previous day?

Mrs. Beckett: All I can say is that it is a clear indication of the priorities of Conservative Members that they spend so much time on this kind of nit-picking point


and are not the slightest bit interested in debating issues of major importance such as the economy, on which they have nothing at all to say.

Mr. John Cryer: Can the Leader of the House find time for a debate on speech therapy? This is, to some extent, a local problem. I discovered three or four years ago that there was a shortage of speech therapists in my borough, and despite the best efforts of the local community health trust, that shortage has not been addressed. I suspect, from speaking to other right hon. and hon. Members, that it is a national shortage which needs addressing at a national level, which is why we need a debate or a statement on it.
Following on from the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), I should like to emphasise that it is the view of probably the majority of right hon. and hon. Members, if there were a completely free vote, that the City of London (Ward Elections) Bill is an attack on democracy and on representative democracy. It is the first extension of the business vote since 1832. Can we just kick it out after we win the election?

Mrs. Beckett: First, my hon. Friend is right to say that although there may be a particular local problem with regard to the availability of speech therapy, there is a general problem and has been for quite some time. That is due not least to the previous Government's record of administration in running the health service, when many of these specialties and valuable contributors to health care were neglected and actively undermined.
With regard to my hon. Friend's remarks about the City of London (Ward Elections) Bill, I have nothing to add to what I said before.

Dr. Julian Lewis: As these may be the last business questions of this Parliament, and as I am one of the regular attenders, may I say on behalf of several of my right hon. and hon. Friends how much we have appreciated the way the Leader of the House has discharged her duties, typified by the courtesy with which she responded to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) only a few moments ago?
Now back to business. I have repeatedly raised the point that, a year and a half ago, the President of the European Commission described the Commissioners as the Government of Europe, and this has been repeatedly disregarded by Ministers, including the Prime Minister, whenever it has been raised in the House. Now that the Chancellor of Germany has made the same statement—proposing to formalise the European Commission as the Government of Europe—and has been backed, according to press reports today, by the Belgian Prime Minister, will the right hon. Lady find time for a statement by an appropriate Minister on the serious constitutional question whether this country will continue governing itself, or will indeed become part of a European superstate? The Prime Minister's counterparts in other countries clearly wish that to happen.

Mrs. Beckett: My understanding is that the document to which the hon. Gentleman refers is a draft policy paper

that is under discussion in Germany and raises issues as to what the respective powers of the EU and member states should be, and notes that there should be clarity about them. That is very much an issue that the Prime Minister has addressed. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that he has on several occasions raised remarks made by the President of the European Commission: one of the reasons that no one talks much about that is that those remarks are not taken all that seriously.
Finally, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his courteous remarks.

Mr. David Chaytor: May I tell my right hon. Friend about the case of six of my constituents who were arrested by the Greater Manchester police early last summer? In the autumn, their case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, where it remains. By a remarkable coincidence, all six were members of the Bury, North Conservative party—two of them were elected members of the local authority. They stand accused of election fraud, following last year's municipal elections; specifically, they are accused of tampering with postal votes in private residential homes.
In view of the likely—welcome—increase in postal voting in the forthcoming general election, will my right hon. Friend discuss that general issue with her Home Office colleagues to ensure that adequate guidelines are given to local authorities so that the risk of fraud in postal voting is reduced to a minimum? Will it be possible to find time, during next week's business, for a debate on the Floor of the House?

Mrs. Beckett: I was not aware of the particular case to which my hon. Friend refers. I am aware, however, that cases of such fraud have occurred in the past—the one that comes to my mind was also in connection with a residential home. That suggests a particular and clear vulnerability in handling postal votes in respect of such places. It is the responsibility of the electoral registration officer to check that someone is a properly registered elector and that electoral fraud of that kind is not being undertaken. Obviously, guidance has gone out to electoral registration officers stating that they should take such matters seriously in view of the sensible and welcome easing of the availability of postal voting. I fear, however, that I cannot undertake to find time during the coming week for a debate of the kind to which my hon. Friend alludes.

Mr. Graham Brady: In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day), the right hon. Lady was unable to give an assurance that important policy statements from the Government would be made in the House. Perhaps we could approach the matter in another way. Would it be possible to find an opportunity for Members of the House to attend the Lobby briefing, so that we could end the constitutional anomaly that arose yesterday whereby members of the Lobby were able to question the organ grinder, whereas Members of the House had to put up with the monkey?

Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. I made it extremely clear to his hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) that the Government make very many statements—and all statements of importance—in the House.
On Lobby briefings, first, as someone who attends them, I can tell the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) that he would not find them nearly as illuminating as he thinks. Secondly, if he does have an interest in them, they are of course available on the No. 10 website.

Mr. Gordon Prentice: Is my right hon. Friend at all surprised by the huge amount of support received for my early-day motion 572 on the business affairs of working members of the royal family?
[That this House applauds the decision of Buckingham Palace to consider issuing guidance on how the business affairs of working members of the Royal Family might be conducted in future; believes a register of royal interests, along the lines of the House of Commons Register of Members' Interests, should be considered; hopes the Palace will invite the views of Right honourable and honourable Members on any draft guidance; and invites the Select Committee on Public Administration to review current practice and offer suggestions for change where it considers appropriate.]
The motion was signed by 108 Members. Will my right hon. Friend put out feelers to the Palace and use her good offices to set up a meeting between the Lord Chamberlain—Lord Luce—myself and other Members who expressed an interest in the matter by tabling the early-day motion? Is it not the case—indeed, I know that my right hon. Friend will agree with me because I know the kind of person she is—that, if guidelines emerge and are secret, they are no use at all?

Mrs. Beckett: I take my hon. Friend's point; it is helpful if guidelines generally are understood. As for his early-day motion, I understand that those matters are

under consideration by those who are properly charged with such responsibilities, who will, no doubt, issue any statement that they have to make in due course.

Mr. John Bercow: May we please have a debate on the proposed national works council directive, which would, in this country hit more than 36,000 companies with more than 50 employees? Given that the European Union Employment and Social Affairs Council's meeting on that matter has been conveniently postponed from 7 May to 11 June this year; that Germany's opposition to the directive is said to be weakening; and that, as the right hon. Lady is well aware from painful experience, the matter is ultimately determined by majority voting under the European social chapter because of this Government's crass stupidity, why does not she just admit that, as we have long suspected, the Government have in mind a craven capitulation on the subject to the advocates of European corporatism in the EU?

Mrs. Beckett: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman attaches any great significance to the postponement of further discussion on that issue. To hear his remarks, anyone would think that the matter had suddenly arisen out of the blue and was for urgent discussion, whereas it has been discussed since at least 1997; it has been discussed and argued about for years. As for the notion that, in some way, it is a consequence of actions taken by this Government, it is in fact a consequence of the discussions that were under way before we came to power. However, I assure him that the Government will continue to fight the case that we believe to be right with the utmost vigour and, if I may say so, with rather more success than the party that he supports when it was in government.

Foot and Mouth

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Nick Brown): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the foot and mouth outbreak.
This is the 10th time that I have updated the House on the outbreak. Once again, I should like to provide details of the latest position on the disease, to set out the measures the Government are taking and to give right hon. and hon. Members the opportunity to raise points with me.
As of midday today, there had been 1,537 confirmed cases of foot and mouth disease in Great Britain. Since I spoke to the House last week, the average number of cases per day has fallen further, from 16 in the week ending 22 April, to 11 in the week ending 29 April. That continues the decline of the disease from the highest point of 43 cases per day in the week ending 1 April.
More than 2.4 million animals have now been slaughtered for disease control purposes. A further 630,000 animals have been slaughtered under the livestock welfare disposal scheme. May I remind the House that in the 1967 outbreak of foot and mouth disease, which lasted for more than seven months, only 434,000 animals were slaughtered in total? The current outbreak is, as I have said before, unprecedented in scale and in the speed at which it spread.
There is no longer any backlog of animals awaiting disposal, anywhere in Great Britain. The disposal backlog in Devon, to which I referred last week, will have been cleared by the end of today. There are small numbers of animals awaiting slaughter, but the position has improved greatly during the past few weeks. That achievement is the result of a concerted effort in the past few days and weeks, using all the disposal methods—rendering, burning, incinerating, landfill and burial—according to need and as appropriate in the local circumstances.
We have been able to lift restrictions in 10 different areas, where there have been no new cases for 30 days and where thorough veterinary and serological testing has taken place. Some 16,000 farms have now benefited from the lifting of the tighter movement restrictions associated with infected areas. That represents about 13 per cent. of the number of farms that were ever restricted.
We can therefore be optimistic about the future course of the disease, although the epidemiologists warn us that cases will continue to occur for some time yet. What is clear is that our policy was the right one: to bear down on the outbreak swiftly and prevent greater spread of the disease by rapid slaughtering, within 24 hours of the report of a new case, tracing dangerous contacts and tackling the disease on contiguous premises within 48 hours. This has been crucial to the control of the epidemic.
Last week I was able to announce to the House a broadening of the existing areas of discretion for local veterinary judgment in relation to culling on a neighbouring farm. That has provided some relief from automatic slaughter of cattle and has been generally welcomed by farmers, as has the move towards making special arrangements for rare breeds of sheep and hefted flocks.
On vaccination, it remains the position that the necessary support among farmers, consumers and the food industry for a vaccination programme in Cumbria and

possibly Devon has not been forthcoming and I cannot see that situation changing now, given the decline in the number of daily confirmed cases. Contingency plans remain in place for the rapid introduction of a vaccination programme should the situation change.
I announced last week a number of ways in which we have re-established routes for healthy livestock to be sold into the food chain. I am pleased to say that we are now issuing instructions to veterinary staff so that they can issue licences which will allow healthy stock from premises within 3 km of an infected place to move after a period of time to slaughter and use in the human food chain. Farmers who wish to take advantage of this should contact their local animal health offices. Access to the livestock welfare disposal scheme remains open to anyone who can demonstrate a real welfare problem that cannot be addressed in any other way. My right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State will be meeting farming organisations tomorrow to review the operation of the scheme and its future.
The Government also want to do something to help with welfare problems on farms in infected areas which cannot move animals because of the local intensity of foot and mouth disease cases. I therefore propose to ask our veterinary staff to examine these problems on a case by case basis and to permit movements on farms provided that the fight against foot and mouth disease is not compromised. The most common problem which this change will address will be where animals are not able to cross public roads to fresh grazing. The change will be introduced by the middle of next week at the latest.
We continue to pay large sums in compensation and other payments to farmers resulting from the foot and mouth outbreak. We have already paid over £100 million pounds in compensation and the latest estimate is that this figure will eventually be over £600 million. The livestock welfare disposal scheme is expected to provide more than £200 million. This is all in addition to the £156 million being paid in agrimonetary compensation to livestock farmers and all the other funding that the Government are providing to support the rural economy and the tourism industry more generally. We are in discussion with the devolved Administrations and the farming unions about the longer term recovery plan.
The Government have also taken steps to safeguard farmers' entitlements to CAP payments. Following consultation with farming unions, the deadline for submitting IACS forms will remain 15 May. However, we have agreed with the European Commission that it will amend its rules on changes that may be made to IACS forms after 15 May. This flexibility will make it easier for farmers to adjust their claims to take account of individual circumstances. My Department has written to all IACS applicants to give them full details of the flexibilities we have secured and the procedures to follow. Farmers whose cattle or sheep have been culled and who are currently unsure of their future prospects should take steps to safeguard their entitlement to future subsidy, if and when they decide to restock their farms. This means that they should submit an IACS form in the normal way by 15 May. Where appropriate, they should also tick the boxes on the form for hill farming allowances and extensification premium.
When I reported to the House on 27 March, I drew attention to the need to enforce the rules on commercial and personal imports of meat and meat products into the


United Kingdom. I should like now to inform the House of the steps that the Government have taken and are taking in this context.
The control of meat and meat product imports into this country involves the inspection of commercial imports at border inspection posts, effective controls on personal imports and action in shops and other food premises against sales of illegally imported food. The Government are taking action in all those contexts to build on our existing controls.
First, we have set up improved arrangements for the pooling of information in government about known or suspected illegal imports. That will help the authorities concerned—MAFF, port health authorities, local authorities and Customs and Excise—to target their activities on the areas of greatest risk.
Secondly, the Food Standards Agency has undertaken a programme of visits to ports and airports to examine the effectiveness of public health controls on imported food.
Thirdly, we shall be taking early steps to ensure that the restrictions on what may be brought into the United Kingdom from outside the European Union and the European Economic Area are made known to travellers by a publicity campaign involving the travel industry, airports, ports and Foreign and Commonwealth Office posts abroad.
Fourthly, the FSA has asked port health authorities and local authorities to ensure that, as part of their routine inspection of food premises and imported food, they check for illegal imports. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State has laid before the House an amendment to the Products of Animal Origin (Import and Export) Regulations 1996 that will clarify local authorities' powers to seize suspected illegal imports. I understand that equivalent action is being taken in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Imports of meat and meat products into the United Kingdom, as into other member states of the European Union, take place within the framework of European law. As I promised the House on 27 March, I have asked the European Commission to give urgent attention to ensuring that the law on personal imports into the EU is clear and robust. Commissioner Byrne indicated at last week's meeting of the Agriculture Council that the Commission attaches great importance to ensuring that there is a high level of protection from disease at the Community's borders. I understand that the Commission's current thinking is that the main scope for tightening the EU's policy on imports lies in ensuring that the current rules are properly policed and in identifying and closing any loopholes.
I referred last week to the banning of pigswill and undertook to make a further announcement. I can inform the House that we are today making an order that will ban the feeding to livestock swill of catering waste that contains or has been in contact with meat. The ban is extended to include poultry and fish waste. The order will come into force on 24 May, after a three week phase-in period that is designed to ensure that animals can safely be weaned off waste food and on to an alternative diet.
The order has been made after consultation with the industry and other interested parties. The possible banning of all catering waste was considered in the consultation, but was subsequently deemed unnecessary, although the

feeding of all types of catering waste from premises where meat or meat products are handled or prepared will be banned.
As I said, we can be cautiously optimistic that the worst is over, but we know that there will be sporadic outbreaks for some time and that we cannot afford to let our guard drop for a moment. All the resources that are required to overcome the disease will remain in place where they are needed, for as long as they are needed. We are determined to see this operation through to a successful conclusion. It is in all our interests to ensure that the job is done properly, so that farming and the whole of the countryside can get back to normal as soon as possible.

Several hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before I call the Opposition spokesman, may I say that it is my desire to call every hon. Member who wishes to speak on the statement? However, I need the co-operation of the House and I expect questions to be as brief as possible.

Mr. Tim Yeo (South Suffolk): I am grateful to the Minister for his statement, which was supplied to me in advance. I want to begin by repeating the tribute that Conservative Members have paid previously to everyone in the front line of the crisis—the Army, the vets and the many others who have been working extremely hard to get on top of the disease.
I warmly welcome the improved position that the Minister described. It is very good news that the measures that have been taken—it has to be said that some of them were taken belatedly—are now working. Nevertheless, he should know that the crisis is far from over in many parts of Britain. What he describes as a small number of animals awaiting slaughter was, last night, 107,000—more than three times the number that was awaiting slaughter on the day that I first called for the Army to be deployed in an operational role to bring the crisis under control.
In Cumbria, the situation is still so serious that the Army has just been forced to establish a new crisis management centre in the south of the county. In Somerset this week, the disease has struck in a new part of the county for the first time. In Scotland, the disease is still spreading from west to east in the border country. In the Welsh valleys new areas have suffered infection.
On top of that, there is growing criticism from farmers and vets, in places as far apart as Devon and Essex, that the Government may have changed the way in which cases are counted. In Essex, for example, antibodies were found in sheep at Great Wigborough, but the Ministry decided not to include that as an infected case. If foot and mouth was present in those animals, as local farmers and vets believe, why does the Ministry refuse to classify it as a confirmed case?
Will the Minister explain what changes have been made to the basis on which the daily total of new cases is now calculated? Does he agree that, if cases of infection are not recorded as such, there is a danger that an area may wrongly be assumed to be free of the disease and that that may lead to restrictions being lifted prematurely, and the risk of a flare up of the disease at a later date? Was it not one of the lessons of the 1967 outbreak that the foot was taken off the pedal prematurely?
When the Prime Minister abandoned his plan five weeks ago for an election today, I set out the four tests on which judgment about whether the crisis had been resolved should be based. Good progress has been made towards satisfying two of those tests—the report-to-slaughter time down to 24 hours for infected cases, and the fall in the daily total of new cases. But the other two tests have not been met. The geographical spread of the disease has not yet been reversed, and many farmers with healthy animals are still not allowed to move them, for very good reasons.
How many farmers are subject to movement restrictions on healthy animals and how long does the Minister expect those restrictions to remain? Does he agree that farming cannot return to normal until all those restrictions are lifted, and the crisis cannot therefore be said to be fully resolved until all four of my tests have been met?
In the context of the welfare disposal scheme, I welcome the steps that the Minister has announced this afternoon. How long will it be before farmers with healthy animals within 3 km of an infected place are allowed to move those animals to slaughter for the human food chain? Will the Minister confirm that help will continue to be given to farmers whose premises now require disinfection?
It is now clear that the disease reached its present horrific scale because of the Government's failure to take the prompt action suggested by the Conservative party and recommended by the report to the Northumberland inquiry and the report of western command after the 1967 outbreak. [Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary says that this crisis is less serious than the one in 1967.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley): It has been dealt with faster.

Mr. Yeo: The Minister has just said that, in 1967, fewer than 500,000 animals were slaughtered. In this crisis already 2.5 million animals have been compulsorily slaughtered and the movement restrictions on healthy animals, which have been imposed directly because of the crisis, have led to farmers asking for another 1.5 million animals to be voluntarily slaughtered. We are talking about a loss of livestock eight times that of 1967. That scale of crisis is the result of Government inaction.
Will the Minister confirm that, when the inquiry into the handling of the crisis is set up, independent experts will be asked to assess by how much the spread of the disease could have been reduced, how many animals might have been saved and how many businesses might have survived if the Army had been given the full operational role that we called for on 11 March, and if the policy of slaughter on suspicion had been introduced more promptly to cut the report-to-slaughter time to less than 24 hours at an earlier date?
On compensation, is the Minister aware of the anxiety about the retrospective cut that he announced last week in payments to farmers whose animals had been accepted for the welfare disposal scheme before 27 April? Will he reverse the decision and eliminate the element of retrospection? Will he speed up compensation payments generally? His statement suggests that approximately

£500 million is currently owed to farmers whose animals have been slaughtered. Why has he not acted to help farmers whose cattle have passed the age of 30 months and cannot be sold because of movement restrictions? They have suffered an unrecoverable loss directly because of the epidemic.
I welcome the steps that the Minister announced for dealing with import controls. Is he now ready to introduce long overdue measures to stop meat entering Britain from countries where foot and mouth disease is endemic and to block the importing of other sub-standard meat, which may endanger human or animal health? Will he assure hon. Members that swift action will be taken if the Food Standards Agency decides that controls at ports and airports are too weak? Does he realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) raised the problem of personal imports through Heathrow, and that the Ministry was asked to take action in May last year? Nothing was done. Only last Sunday 444 kg of fish and meat in 43 bags were discovered on one flight from Ghana. I recently visited the port of Dover, where no controls are exercised on food imports.
Livestock farmers are not the only people who have suffered through foot and mouth disease. Thousands of businesses in tourism and other rural activities such as equestrianism have been devastated. Why has nothing further been heard from the Government's taskforce? Why has the Conservative proposal of offering interest-free loans to affected businesses not been accepted? That proposal was suggested in the House more than six weeks ago and has widespread support even among Labour Members.
If today's statement is the last to Parliament on the subject before Dissolution, will the Minister confirm that full details of the progress of the disease will be available to all candidates on a constituency basis throughout the election campaign?
The 10 weeks of the foot and mouth disease crisis have exposed muddle, incompetence and delay at every level of Government. Farmers, other businesses and taxpayers will pay a high price for ministerial negligence, especially in the early stages of the epidemic. At each stage, the Prime Minister has acted with his eye on the headlines and not on the problems. First, he played down the crisis. He was afraid that admitting that we were facing a national emergency would wreck his precious election timetable. Now he claims that we are on the home straight, but millions of hard-working men and women whose livelihoods have been put at risk by Government dither are nowhere near it. They face an uncertain and, in many cases, bleak future. They will have listened in vain today for any genuine encouragement and assurance that the Labour Government care enough about the rural communities that they have done so much to damage in the past four years to take the necessary action to ensure their survival.

Mr. Brown: Let me repeat that it is a mistake to milk a serious disease outbreak for party political purposes. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I encourage those on the Opposition Benches to give the Minister a hearing.

Mr. Brown: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Having asked the questions, it would be as well if the Opposition allowed me to answer them rather than behaving like overgrown public school boys.
I shall answer the questions in reverse order. I shall continue to put all the information that I can into the public domain. That has been my policy throughout the outbreak. We will make public and act on any advice that we receive from the FSA.
There has been no retrospective cut in rates under the welfare disposal scheme. It is essential to all those who care about the livestock industry, however, that our introduction of the welfare scheme does not create a false market. In the long term, that would be ruinous for the industry and suck in imports.
The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) questioned our prompt action—this, incidentally, from a party that took 11 years to get the proper public protection measures into place to deal with BSE—and referred to when the Army were called in. The advice of the 1967 outbreak report was followed. Ministerial correspondence was exchanged in government, and the Army was called in before the first call for its deployment by the parliamentary Opposition.
The House will know that the Agriculture Select Committee has already begun an inquiry into the outbreak, and I have appeared before it twice, so far. There is also bound to be a Public Accounts Committee inquiry. I pledge that whatever inquiries are held, I will co-operate fully, as will my departmental officials, and we will give evidence willingly.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the comparative scale of the 1967 outbreak. In spite of the much larger scale of this outbreak, we have brought it under control and are moving towards a conclusion more promptly than in 1967.
I answered the question about the 3 km zones in my opening statement. The hon. Gentleman also asked how many farms are still subject to movement restrictions. The answer is some 160,000, as Great Britain is still a control zone.
On the question of the compilation of statistics, where infected premises are confirmed as such, they are reported as such. There are no exemptions. If blood tests turn out negative, however, we cannot report such a case as a positive case.
The hon. Gentleman said that the outbreak was far from over. Yes, there will be cases for a while yet, and it is right that we remain vigilant, do not drop our guard and bear down on those cases.
Finally, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his recognition of the fact that the position has improved and for his support for the public servants—both civilian and military—who are working so hard to bring this terrible disease outbreak to a firm conclusion.

Mr. David Drew: May I be the first to congratulate my right hon. Friend not only on his steadfastness through this difficult time, but on his good humour, which is often needed in these difficult circumstances? Will he look at how he can begin to shrink the ring around infected premises—those farms that are subject to form D restrictions—as quickly as possible because that is where the biggest problems are arising in the recovery period?
Will my right hon. Friend make sure that payments are made expeditiously? People who have been waiting for a good number of weeks need to know not only how they will restock, but how they will afford to do that and other things on their holding. Will he conduct an investigation into the state veterinary service—which was cut to ribbons by the Conservatives—to see how we can rebuild it?

Mr. Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the size of the state veterinary service is one of the issues that we will want to consider in the aftermath of this terrible disease outbreak. On prompt payment, I have already asked officials what can be done to make sure that we are making prompt payments in these terrible circumstances.
As for shrinking the 3 km infected zones, where that is possible I have asked that it be done, but it has to be consistent with disease control. We are trying to find ways of enabling livestock from premises under form D restrictions to get to the market. As I said in my opening statement, I hope that that is under way by the middle of next week.

Mr. David Heath: May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the prior notice that he gave me of his statement? I welcome it and the general tenor of the improving situation that it described. However, I express caution; any suggestion that the crisis is over will be seen as a joke in the affected areas. If the epidemic is abating in livestock, there will still be many business casualties in the coming months. Given the new case in Wiveliscombe in Somerset, can the right hon. Gentleman scotch any rumours by stating categorically that no feral deer have tested positive for foot and mouth disease?
May I welcome the flexibility now exercised in the contiguous cull? Will the Minister pay particular attention to valuable pedigree herds that may be caught up in an infected area? On the welfare schemes, how is it that in Devon, where there is already a great deal of concern about the changes in compensation rates, the first newsletter issued by MAFF in the county gave the old, incorrect rates to farmers?
Has the Minister given further consideration to re-establishing the over-30-months scheme? We are approaching spring calving and a lot of cows would normally be moved on at that stage. A backlog will build up unless a suitable measure is put in place in the relatively near future. I welcome the relaxation on form D restricted areas. Does he agree that the best course of action for farmers caught in such areas is to enable them to move non-infected animals for sale?
On import controls, is not it extraordinary that the elementary advice in the statement—that the FSA has asked port health authorities and local authorities to check for illegal imports—should have been given at this stage in the crisis? Perhaps that explains why my hon. Friends and I have been refused permission by Customs and Excise to talk to the authorities at ports.
On pigswill orders, can the Minister confirm that what he has said today means that whey will be excluded from the restriction and, therefore, that the cheese-making industry will not be affected? I had expressed concern about that.
Lastly, will the Minister join the Minister for the Environment in saying that there should be an independent public inquiry on the handling of the foot and


mouth disease outbreak? The Minister should have nothing to fear from some aspects of that inquiry, but clearly there is scope for improvement. We need a clear commitment to allowing someone to consider the evidence of the past few months.

Mr. Brown: Of course, we shall consider all the issues arising from the disease outbreak. On whey, my understanding is the same as that of the hon. Gentleman. On enforcement, it is perfectly reasonable for the FSA to highlight those issues with the appropriate regulatory authorities. On the over-30-months scheme, I want to return it to normal working. On the welfare schemes, I understand the point that he makes, but ensuring that we are not setting rates that create a false market is essential for the reasons that I set out earlier.
On the hon. Gentleman's question about pedigree herds, the crucial issue is biosecurity on the farm. If farmers want their animals to be given due consideration when their farm is contiguous to an infected premise, the correct way to achieve that is to pay scrupulous attention to biosecurity. Clearly, the owners of pedigree herds are already well aware of that.
On feral deer, I am still not aware of any case of the disease having been found, although I have discussed what the Government would do in such circumstances, because we would not automatically seek to cull it out. I strongly agree with what the hon. Gentleman said about acting with caution and not saying that the outbreak is over. There is still much to be done, and that includes disease control measures.

Mr. Gordon Prentice: A number of farmers in Pendle have been in touch with me to express concern about the 20-day standstill period. I appreciate that the Government are consulting on that, but can the Minister tell the House anything about the issue? Is he minded to make a policy change?

Mr. Brown: The consultation period is not over yet, and a number of matters of detail have emerged already. Although the principle of a 20-day standstill for sheep and cattle has been welcomed, people want the Government further to consider a number of caveats, so I have extended the consultation period. The Government have not reached a firm conclusion.

Mrs. Ann Winterton: Will the Minister confirm that there will be a full judicial inquiry, on which the Government so enthusiastically insisted for BSE, into the foot and mouth outbreak? If not, surely the Government will be accused of being interested in the problems of previous Governments, but not in their own.

Mr. Brown: I have nothing to add to what I have already said to the House.

Mr. Huw Edwards: I thank my right hon. Friend for the measures that he has announced today and inform him that, unfortunately, the 18th outbreak in Monmouthshire occurred just last week. It has affected seven contiguous farms.
The main concern of the farmers with whom I have been dealing this week are delays in compensation and the reduction in the rates of the welfare disposal scheme.

It is particularly unfair on those farmers to experience unreasonable delays in dealing with their applications. Will my right hon. Friend consider the operation of the Intervention Board, which is a rather confusing institution for any of us to deal with? I hope that designated officers can deal with regions or sub-regions of the country at least, so that we can speak to someone in person.

Mr. Brown: The purpose of the welfare scheme is to deal with genuine welfare problems whereby animals cannot be managed where they are or cannot be moved under licence, which is the preferred option. My hon. Friend asks about making payments as expeditiously as we can. I have asked officials to see what more can be done.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: The very measured tones in which the right hon. Gentleman has talked about the problem today represent a marked contrast with the reported comments of the Prime Minister, who is said effectively to have remarked that the crisis is over. The case in Wiveliscombe has been referred to, and MAFF has already identified 15 dangerous contacts.
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, if the measured tones that he uses are replaced by those of the Prime Minister, the public will be given the impression that the crisis is over and will drop their guard? There are already reports in the west country of farmers moving their stock around without having received the appropriate licences, and if the Prime Minister's tone is adopted, we may yet reap the whirlwind.

Mr. Brown: The Prime Minister has not said that the outbreak is over. It is not. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in saying very firmly to all involved in the livestock industry, but to farmers in particular, that they must not move their livestock without a licence. Unauthorised movement of livestock is the surest way to keep the disease outbreak going.

Mr. Eric Martlew: I thank the Minister for all the hard work that he and his staff have put in. He has visited my constituency twice.
There has been a severe problem in Cumbria, but over the 10 weeks a lot of local labour has been employed in the cull. Many of those people lost their jobs because of foot and mouth. Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that local people will be the last to lose their jobs as the handling of the epidemic winds down? A senior official of the Lake district national park has said that it is unlikely that access to the fells will be possible this year. Did that official get his information from MAFF and does my right hon. Friend believe that that is the case? If it is, the tourism industry in Cumbria will have severe problems.

Mr. Brown: That is not my understanding of the situation, but I shall ensure that my hon. Friend gets a written statement on access to the fells. In Carlisle we have tried to employ those who have been displaced from their normal work because of the outbreak on disease control measures. Although I cannot give him the specific assurance for which he asks, I can say that we will do what we can to try to maintain the local employment base where that is possible.
Let me take the opportunity to express my admiration for the community that my hon. Friend represents, and the neighbouring communities, which have been resilient throughout this most terrible outbreak.

Sir Peter Emery: I wish to put to the Minister a question that was not asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), the shadow Minister of Agriculture, who has greatly enhanced his reputation over the past 11 weeks by his sensible handling of the problem for the Opposition.
The Government, understanding that the outbreak was a national emergency, rightly introduced the funding of hardship relief.
That is proceeding, but one understood when it was introduced that the expense was to be met by the national Exchequer. We now find that the areas that have been hit are being called on to meet between 5 and 25 per cent. of the cost of the hardship relief. The local authorities that have had no problems have no extra expense, whereas a quite small district council in East Devon that has had cases of foot and mouth, and where hardship relief is being provided, is faced with an extra bill of £123,000. That is something that it never expected. Surely that cost should be met by the total Exchequer. May I urge the Minister to take this matter to the Treasury and to the Prime Minister—the Minister will not decide this himself—because it stinks of Treasury control, and is not a proper and sensible relief?

Mr. Brown: There is no contributory element to the agriculture schemes for which I am responsible. I shall draw the right hon. Gentleman's remarks to the attention of the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, who is responsible for the scheme to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

Mrs. Diana Organ: The policy of culling animals on contiguous premises has been successful in bringing this disease under control, but in the forest of Dean 26 premises have been served with A notices as part of the contiguous cull as a result of dangerous contact with free-roaming sheep from the statutory forest. People have objected to that on the basis that the animals can either be counted in penny numbers or are pets. Will my right hon. Friend respond to the request from me and others for a serological study in relation to the A notices, so that we can move on to the flexibility involving testing before culling that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) mentioned? Secondly, may I press the Minister to put pressure on Forest Enterprise to lift the restrictions on some areas of the statutory forest, when we have resolved the issue of the 26 outstanding A notices, so that we can rebuild the tourism that has been so badly damaged in my area?

Mr. Brown: I will be discussing that issue with Forest Enterprise, and I have asked for veterinary advice about the unique circumstances in my hon. Friend's constituency.

Mr. Stephen O'Brien: Is the Minister aware not only of the effects of an approach to businesses in the agricultural, tourist and retail sectors that has effectively been a sticking plaster on a haemorrhage,

but of the real damage that is taking place for many businesses in rural areas affected by foot and mouth, not least the Clacher pipeline business in my constituency and many others like it? Do the Government have a policy for compensation and assistance, rather than a series of measures put together in a somewhat ad hoc way?

Mr. Brown: I have said this before, but let me repeat it. It would be quite wrong to imply that the Government can somehow buy out all the consequential losses resulting from foot and mouth disease. That is true of agriculture and of the other rural businesses that have been so terribly affected by this disease outbreak. By far the best thing that I can do for everyone employed in the rural community is to bear down on the disease and eliminate it, and that is what I am setting out to do.

Mr. John Maples: May I raise two questions with the Minister that have been raised with me by farmers in the restricted zone on the Warwickshire-Worcestershire border? The last outbreak was nearly six weeks ago and we are now going through the process of inspections that we hope will result in the lifting of the zone restrictions. Part of that process involves the blood testing of sheep in the zone, and those blood tests all have to be analysed at the Pirbright laboratory. Is the Minister confident that there are enough resources available at Pirbright to do those tests without causing unnecessary delay?
Secondly, on the movement of healthy stock in a restricted zone for slaughter for human consumption, I understand that such stock has to be moved to an abattoir in the zone. That restriction makes it almost impossible for many people to get their animals to slaughter. Would it be possible to allow the animals to be moved to abattoirs slightly outside the restricted zone, if adequate safeguards were in place in the form of a veterinary inspection before the animals left the farm?

Mr. Brown: It may be possible for us to adopt such a scheme in future, but it is not at the moment. Although it is possible, under strictly controlled conditions, to move animals in an infected zone, we do not want to move animals from an infected zone to one that is currently clear, for obvious disease control reasons. I am not saying that it will not be possible to free up the movement restrictions as we continue to bear down on the disease, and I can see the desirability of the right hon. Gentleman's case from a trade point of view.
On the question of resources for testing at Pirbright, we have enhanced the available resources and I am confident that they are enough to carry out the serology tests that we need.

Mr. John Burnett: The Minister announced that there are proposals to allow healthy stock within 3 km of an infected place to move to slaughter "after a period of time". Will he help the House and my constituents by telling us what he anticipates that period of time to be? Secondly, it was dreadfully unfair to reduce the payments under the welfare cull. That is especially true for farmers under D notices, and I detect grave misgivings in all parts of the House about that.
Finally, will the Minister tell us when Dartmoor will be reopened to the public? The tourist trade on Dartmoor remains at a standstill and it is critical that it should be reopened as soon as it is safe to do so.

Mr. Brown: I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman's last point. I want to get Dartmoor opened up as soon as possible. However, that must be consistent with disease control. On the D class restrictions for people in the 3 km zones, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are continuing difficulties with movement restrictions, although I hope that what I have announced today will help. My noble Friend Baroness Hayman, the Minister of State, is meeting farmers' representatives tomorrow to discuss the welfare scheme, and I have had some discussions with farmers' leaders on how to help those categories of animals that are compromised for market reasons rather than welfare reasons.
On the hon. Gentleman's question about the period of time, that will be a matter of clinical and veterinary judgment. That judgment will vary from place to place depending on circumstances, but a veterinary judgment will say whether the animal in question is disease-free.

Mr. David Curry: The Minister will know that this crisis will not end on the first day that there are no new cases to announce. That is true for farmers, and also for the hundreds of thousands of other businesses that have no cash or customers and face the prospect of their summer being shot to pieces as well. Will the Minister draw the attention of the Government to the need to persuade more British visitors to come to the countryside, through advertising campaigns? In Yorkshire, £80 out of every £100 spent on tourism comes from British visitors, and the quickest way to get economic life back into the countryside is to get Britons back into visiting their own country.

Mr. Brown: I agree with both the right hon. Gentleman's points. Yes, we need to promote domestic tourism, and my right hon. Friend is setting out to do just that. The disease is not over yet, and it requires continued vigilance not only from public servants, Ministers and Members of Parliament representing their constituents, but from the farming industry as well. Any unlicensed movement of animals carried out by people who believe that we are on the home straight could cause a resurgence of the disease outbreak. We must all remain vigilant and committed to bearing down on and eliminating the disease.

Mr. Tim Collins: May I say that nowhere will there be more people praying that the Minister is right to be even cautiously optimistic than in Cumbria? Unfortunately, however, in south Cumbria things are not getting any better; they are still getting worse. In fact, there have been more outbreaks of the disease in my constituency in the past fortnight than in the whole of the period up until then. We have now lost at least half the irreplaceable rare breed sheep on the upland fells that play such a vital role in the ecology and look of the Lake district. Lake district tourist businesses in my constituency report that business is quieter and losses are greater now than they were before Easter.
May I press the Minister to consider taking two steps that need to be taken, as a matter of urgency? First, will he make it Government policy to ensure that rare sheep breeds such as Herdwick and rough fell are not wiped out? Will he declare today that no sheep belonging to those breeds will be wiped out unless there is specific blood-test evidence that they have the disease, and that measures will be introduced to ensure that a major ecological disaster does not take place in the coming weeks, when the last of those animals could be wiped out without MAFF's even knowing that that is what it is doing?
Secondly, will the Minister please convey a clear message to the Treasury and the rural taskforce that Cumbria is bleeding to death? Its Labour-controlled county council estimated this week that losses already amounted to £500 million in that county alone, and were escalating steadily. Businesses in my constituency and beyond need more help, and need it desperately.

Mr. Brown: I am considering what I can do, in the context of my ministerial responsibilities, to help the areas with highest infectivity—Cumbria and Devon specifically, but not exclusively. I will draw the hon. Gentleman's other remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State.
What the hon. Gentleman says about special breeds is entirely right: we need to devise a strategy that gives them the best possible chance of survival. I believe that we have done that in discussions with breed societies and representatives of local farmers. I am advised—and I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows this—that a management rather than an automatic-culling strategy has the best prospect of achieving what we both want to achieve.

Mr. Peter Luff: I could raise many issues relating to the mishandling of the disease in my constituency, but I would not do so in a spirit of political partisanship, because I was sent here by my constituents to scrutinise the Executive. I shall, in fact, raise just one issue on which the Minister seemed to be prepared to move further. I refer to the form D restrictions.
A farmer in my constituency, Mr. Jeremy Boaz of Willow Bough farm in Grafton Flyford, stands to lose thousands of pounds because he is still under a form D restriction. If he has disposed of his animals under the livestock welfare disposal scheme, he will receive not £50 to £60 per sheep or lamb, but about £28.80. Moreover, he will receive nothing for animals that are slaughtered simply because he cannot afford to feed them. Meanwhile, the farm that caused the outbreak that led to the restriction is, quite rightly, receiving full compensation for its animals. Can such injustice be justified?

Mr. Brown: I hope that by the middle of next week the hon. Gentleman's constituent will be able to move his animals commercially, and receive a proper price for them in the marketplace.

Mr. Dominic Grieve: The Minister has spent some of his time providing some gentle reassurance that the Government have the issue of illegal food imports in hand. Is he aware of the sheer scale of the problem at


airports such as Heathrow, where dozens of flights end every day? The vast majority will not be checked for such illegal food imports. The episode of last Sunday night, which I witnessed—444 kg of food was seized—resulted from a random check carried out by Customs and Excise. It is unlikely to be repeated frequently, if at all, and nothing of the kind had happened for many weeks before that.
The Minister mentioned port health authorities, but they have no statutory powers to search passenger luggage for imports of commercial scale. Responsibility rests entirely with Customs and Excise, whose priorities at present relate to class A drugs and tobacco. Customs and Excise currently has no recourse to sniffer dogs, or to any of the resources or logistics that are necessary for the carrying out of checks on food imports.
Will the Minister confirm that he has been aware of the current state of affairs at least since 30 May last year, when he was written to directly about this very problem by those involved in the detection of such imports at Heathrow airport?

Mr. Brown: Yes, but as the hon. Gentleman says, enforcement of the law is a matter for Customs and Excise. Strategy powers reside with Customs and Excise, and any representations made to me, as a Minister, would be sent to Customs and Excise as well because of its powers to enforce the law.
I think that we should take a robust line on illegal imports. We have upped the checking and testing regime, which involves agencies throughout public service, including local authority trading standards officers. If more needs to be done, more will be done. I consider it unacceptable for the whole country to be put through the pain and turmoil that we have been put through over the past two months because of an illegal import of the disease. We must take firm action to ensure that that cannot happen again.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Will the Minister visit Northumberland, which seems to have been forgotten, although we are seeing new cases nearly every day? Will he heed the anger of people in the Widdrington area, who have witnessed the burial of more than 100,000 carcases and the burning of 3,500, but are told that—although we are supposedly on the home straight—their burial site is to be kept open for another month? Will the Minister pay particular regard to the need to protect the Chillingham wild cattle, and to the impact of all this on tourism businesses? He could even make his trip enjoyable by fitting in a visit to one of the many attractions in Northumberland that are still open.

Mr. Brown: I am aware of the attractions. Given my constituency, Northumberland is high on the list of areas that I am unlikely to overlook. Even were I to do so, it should be borne in mind that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who represents Gateshead, is a frequent visitor.
Of course we will make arrangements to deal with special breeds, including Chillingham cattle. What I cannot do is give all hon. Members the special assurances that they would like about particular disposal sites or disposal routes. I know of the concern that these issues occasion locally—although people feel that the policy

may be right in principle, no one is enthusiastic about having a disposal site as a neighbour—but I cannot assure the right hon. Gentleman that I will manage to intervene, and change decisions made by those who are responsible for these matters regionally.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The Minister, with whom I have worked closely, will know that the two suspected cases in my constituency, at Adlington and North Rode, have proved negative. Unfortunately, however, D form notices and movement restrictions are still in place. I am receiving an increasing number of representations from the Macclesfield branch of the National Farmers Union, and from individual farmers: they want movement restrictions to be lifted immediately.
A number of farmers are what I would describe as examples of economic tragedy in the current crisis. For instance, Mr. J. L. Mellor of High Lee farm, Sutton, has store cattle that are long overdue for sale. He can no longer afford to feed them. Mr. P. J. Simcock of Brink farm, Pott Shrigley, has 300 hundred horned sheep that are available for slaughter immediately. Abattoirs are ready to accept them, but they cannot be sent to the abattoirs. They are clean beasts.
Farmers can no longer afford to feed their animals. Will the Minister examine such cases very carefully, and then tell me—and the Macclesfield NFU—that the D forms and movement restrictions will be lifted in my constituency, as a matter of urgency?

Mr. Brown: I will do what I can to help the hon. Gentleman's constituents.
For every three suspicious cases reported, only one turns out to be a case of foot and mouth disease. When cases are reported, however, it takes longer to prove that the animals are clear than it takes to confirm the disease. If it is possible to lift the 3 km movement restrictions, consistent with disease control, I will ask the regional veterinary authorities to consider the matter carefully, and to treat the case that the hon. Gentleman has raised as a matter of urgency.

Mr. Michael Jack: The Minister was uncharacteristically sharp in his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton). She asked whether there could be a full-scale public inquiry into the matter. Many would want to contribute; many lessons need to be learned. Will the Minister, in the spirit of openness, take this opportunity to explain why the Government do not want a full-scale public inquiry, if that is the case? Many are calling for such an inquiry.
May I re-emphasise the point about the welfare scheme? My constituent Lyn Horrocks received approval for the slaughter of pigs under the scheme, but there was a delay, and she may now receive a lower price for her animals. Does the Minister consider that equitable?

Mr. Brown: If we are talking about the same case as the right hon. Gentleman asked me about at the Select Committee hearing, I do not know whether he has been able yet to drop me a note to explain why the animals cannot be moved or managed where they are. If he could drop me such a note, I promise that I will look at the particular constituency case.
I will co-operate with whatever inquiries are set up. Throughout the disease outbreak, I have put all the advice to me into the public domain and tried to explain my decisions as the disease has taken the course that it has. Where circumstances have changed, and therefore public policy has had to be adapted, I have explained that candidly in front of the House, the Select Committee and, where appropriate, at press conferences, too.

Mr. John Whittingdale (Maldon and East Chelmsford): Can the Minister explain why the MAFF website states that there have been no confirmed cases of foot and mouth in Essex for over three weeks when, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) said, very recently, 1,600 sheep and 112 pigs were slaughtered after antibodies were found in the blood of animals at a farm near Colchester? Does the Minister understand farmers' fears that they may not be being given all the facts? Can he take this opportunity to state exactly what he believes the position to be in Essex?

Mr. Brown: I shall write to the hon. Gentleman to ensure that he has a factual answer to the individual case, but the most likely explanation is that the animals tested negative and were taken out as dangerous contacts. [Interruption.] The presence of antibodies does not necessarily mean that the disease is present. If the animals tested negative for the disease, they would not be included as a positive case. That seems to be the most likely explanation, but I shall arrange for a formal reply to be sent to the hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). However, there is no question of the Government excluding positive cases from the total statistics.

Sir Patrick Cormack: The right hon. Gentleman has tried to be helpful throughout this terrible outbreak. In view of the fact that those who are suffering may shortly be deprived of parliamentary representation for a few weeks, will he set aside a day next week when he and his officials can see Members of Parliament who have particularly difficult cases, rather like the surgeries that we hold in our constituencies?

Mr. Brown: I always try to be as helpful as I can and will continue to be so while I am the Minister.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: Recently, I had a discussion with the Minister about the lack of communication between his officials and those in the devolved Administration in Cardiff. A week last Wednesday, I saw the officials in Cardiff, who sanctioned the movement of sheep within enclosed common land in several parts of my constituency on welfare grounds and because it was risk free. All they needed was the rubber stamp of the chief vet of MAFF. I was assured that those animals could be moved on Monday this week. That has still not happened. May I ask the Minister to intervene personally in the matter? It is an animal welfare problem of quite large proportions.

Mr. Brown: Veterinary authority in these matters is devolved: not only is there regional discretion, but operations on the ground are the responsibility of the

Welsh Assembly, not the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The veterinary advice comes from the same final source: the chief vet is the chief vet for Great Britain, not just for England. I will ask him to examine the case that the hon. Gentleman has raised, but I say gently that day-to-day operational responsibility lies with the Welsh Assembly and the Secretary for Agriculture and Rural Development in Wales.

Sir David Madel: The Minister will recall that he answered a question from me last week about vaccine strategy for zoos. I am grateful to the civil servants in his office, who have listened to my representations since he answered that question. He knows how important that is for Whipsnade zoo in my constituency. Is the vaccine strategy document for zoos now in the public domain? If not, when will it be? When it is, please will he ensure that Whipsnade zoo rapidly has a copy of it?

Mr. Brown: I shall send a copy of the document to Whipsnade zoo and to the hon. Gentleman and place a copy in the Library.

Dr. Julian Lewis: The Minister has reiterated his commitment to MAFF being as open as possible about the progress of the disease. My understanding is that MAFF has been publishing the total number of outbreak cases on a constituency-by-constituency basis, but so far it has not been publishing the lists of the locations of those outbreaks, although it could easily do so because, obviously, it has those at its fingertips in order to arrive at the totals. Does he accept that it is important that that information should be published, particularly if there is a general election campaign going on, when hon. Members will not be able to question the Minister directly on the progress of the disease?

Mr. Brown: My understanding is that I continue to hold ministerial responsibilities regardless of whether a general election is called. I shall continue to treat all hon. Members who are standing for re-election with courtesy and do what I can to help with individual constituency cases.
I shall continue to publish constituency information. I had some reservations about putting the individual addresses of farmers that might be affected into the public domain. My preference was to give the parish where the outbreak had occurred, rather than the individual holding, but I found in the early days of the outbreak that the identities of the farms were appearing in all the newspapers. They were well known locally. I will examine what it is reasonable and fair to publish. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give an absolute commitment, because I have reservations which relate solely to protecting the privacy of farmers, who are going through difficult enough circumstances with the disease outbreak without putting their names into the public domain, with all the consequences of that.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: The Minister will recall that I raised the case of my


constituent, Mr. Tom Fudge of Neighbrook farm, Aston Magna near Moreton-in-Marsh. On that occasion, the Minister replied:
The hon. Gentleman's point about the rates that the Government pay when we purchase animals for destruction is a fair one … I have urged the big retailers and others in the trade to behave responsibly and fairly throughout the supply chain. I have received a sympathetic and supportive response.—[Official Report, 15 March 2001; Vol. 365. c. 1226.]
That same constituent telephoned me this morning. He said that he was feeding 1,400 sheep out of his savings. He has not been able to sell any owing to restrictions and is being offered £30 a lamb, when a couple of weeks ago the price was £45. He says that the foot and mouth crisis is going from bad to worse and asks what the Minister can do to help farmers such as him throughout the country.

Mr. Brown: One thing I cannot do is to organise the welfare disposal scheme in such a way that it acts as a substitute market. Seventy per cent. of the sheep sector is operating, admittedly under licence—under constrained circumstances—in a market-oriented way. If the hon. Gentleman drops me a note setting out the circumstances of his individual constituent, I will see what can be done to help. I am afraid that that is the best offer that I can make.

Mr. Nick Harvey: Will the Minister put out more information to all farmers—not only those with access to the internet—about the restrictions that will apply over the next few months as they try to rebuild their businesses? I welcome the news letter that has been sent to all livestock farmers, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, it contains out-of-date figures for the welfare scheme. Does the Minister understand the frustration of farmers who submitted claims under the welfare scheme some weeks ago, but who are now told by the Intervention Board that the paperwork cannot be found? What exactly is the logic of paying farmers who have kept the animals on their farms for more and more weeks, with all the costs that that incurs, a lower figure than farmers who submitted claims a long time ago and had less costs to cover?

Mr. Brown: The answer is that I must not set up an alternative market. We are trying to enable farmers to get their livestock moving through the food chain, rather than being purchased by the state. If the rates that the state is paying compromise the rates that the market would pay, clearly, the market will be supplied by imports and the farmer will be farming a welfare scheme, rather than running a livestock business. That is the answer to the

question. It is in the longer term interest of the British livestock industry to get it operating as normally possible as we bear down on the disease outbreak.

Miss Anne McIntosh: The Minister quite rightly said that livestock should not be moved without a licence. However, is he aware of the bureaucratic delays, hurdles and obstacles placed in the way of farmers applying locally for such a licence? Will he personally take an interest in the matter and intervene to speed up the granting of licences while we remain in the throes of this dreadful disease? Will he also consider the human rights provisions of which the Government are such a fervent supporter and explain to local farmers in the Vale of York why they will receive a lower compensation rate under the welfare disposal scheme than will those who applied before 17 April?

Mr. Brown: I have answered the welfare question on a number of occasions. The danger is that we will create a false market and that people will farm the scheme rather than the market. I think that it is right to try to get animals moving through the supply chain, and I am putting considerable effort into trying to reinforce the strict licensing schemes that we already have in place.
Tomorrow, my noble Friend Baroness Hayman will meet representatives of the farming community to discuss farms that are under form D restrictions and consider what more can be done to help them. They will also be discussing what more can be done more generally to get the market working normally and the time scale for the welfare scheme—which is, after all, supposed to be a scheme of last resort, after moving the animals in the marketplace or managing them locally has failed as a strategy. It is not, and it cannot be, an alternative market.

Mr. Christopher Gill: I am glad to have the last word on this subject. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there continue to be muddle, confusion and sheer incompetence in the Administration, as evidenced in the case of my constituent, Mr. Huntbatch of Hope farm, Minsterly? Last week, he was told that it would be a month before he could move his animals. This week, on Monday, he was told that it would be two months before he could move any of his animals. On Tuesday, he moved animals to an abattoir.

Mr. Brown: Actually it is I who get the last word, and I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. However, if there is anything that I can do to help his constituent, of course I shall.

International Development White Paper

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Clelland.]

The Secretary of State for International Development (Clare Short) I: I very much welcome this opportunity to debate the Government's second White Paper on international development, "Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor". As the House knows, I greatly regretted the fact that time was not allocated for a statement when the White Paper was published. However, as they say, everything comes to those who wait. I am sure that we all agree that a debate is better than a statement and are pleased to have this debate.
As the House will know, in the past, little time was devoted to discussion of international development, which has for many years been regarded as a residual political issue. We had neither a Department nor a Select Committee to address it. I tell the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) that I hope that we do not have too many more international development events in this Parliament because I have already paid so many tributes to him that any more from me might embarrass him. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on."] Perhaps later.
Previously, very little time—10 minutes, I think—was allowed for a Question Time on international development. Now, we have a separate Department for International Development and the Select Committee on International Development, which has done a superb job under the able leadership of the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford. I have already made clear, and I really mean it, my respect for his commitment to international development and for the work that he has done on international development policy throughout his life, both when he worked at the Commonwealth Development Corporation and ever since he became an hon. Member.
Nevertheless, although we have had two White Papers, legislation on the CDC and an International Development Bill—which I hope will soon be enacted—there is further to go. There is no doubt that, as those who have reflected seriously on such matters probably agree, the biggest moral issue facing humanity is the fact that one in five of those who share this little planet of ours live in abject poverty. The consequences of that inequality for the world, both morally and in terms of world safety and stability, are one of the most important political, strategic and economic issues that the world will have to tackle.
We have a way to go in persuading the political system and all political commentators, both in the United Kingdom and around the world, to face up to the seriousness of the issue and to stop treating it as charity or a residual issue outside mainstream politics. We have to make it clear that, if we are to have a safe and decent future, our priority must be to manage the world more sustainably and justly.

Mr. Andrew Robathan: I should simply like to reiterate the Secretary of State's point. On Tuesday, hon. Members debated HIV-AIDS in the developing world. Horrendous numbers of people are dying from HIV-AIDS, which she and I entirely agree may be the biggest catastrophe facing the world. Sadly, despite that 90-minute debate, the matter was not picked up at all by

political commentators. I hope that she will reiterate, as I think many hon. Members will, that the disease is a disaster, particularly in the developing world.

Clare Short: I agree with the hon. Gentlemen. I also know that he has taken great interest in the subject and frequently tried to draw it to the attention of the House and anyone who would listen. I agree also that the failure of most media political commentators to take seriously that and other international development issues is both worrying and perplexing.
Some time ago, I read an article about the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom, which was a time of profound historical change. The article, however, said that not only contemporary debates in the House, but contemporary media reports, novels and cultural activity were all about landowners. Opinion formers of the time took no notice of the transformation that was caused by industrialisation. I think that we have a comparable situation now. The fact is that the world is becoming increasingly interdependent, and it will be increasingly at risk if we do not act to make it safe.
As I said, both political systems and political commentators treat international development as a residual issue of charity. That is a serious problem for the future safety of the world. However, those of us who do attend to these issues realise that fact and are trying to convince people of the issue's seriousness and the need to address it by making the necessary changes.
Our first White Paper on international development was published in November 1997. It committed the Government to focusing all our development efforts, both our bilateral programme and our influence in the international system, on the systematic reduction of poverty and on meeting the international development targets. Since then, we have worked hard, with considerable success, to try to build that type of commitment right across the international system. We have probably been more successful than I could have hoped for when we started out on the task.
My Department has also published a series of targeted strategy papers—which are not, as the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) once suggested, the reason for my Department's increased publication costs. The papers are in no way vanity publications, but serious documents on the international effort necessary if the targets are to be met. They are also being used worldwide to try to mobilise international collaboration and energy to meet the targets. The targets are not an accidental collection of good things; they track all types of policy necessary in poorer countries to lift people up and create sustainable improvement in their lives. They deal with subjects such as higher income levels, better health care, more education, clean water and better governance.
I became committed to moving on to the second White Paper, on globalisation, after the Seattle meeting. As hon. Members will remember, there was chaos, with large and destructive demonstrations, at that badly run meeting. More worrying was the muddle of some of the commentary on the meeting from around the world. We should seek urgently to clarify in world public opinion the definition, the promises and the threats of globalisation. We also have to clarify how we can manage it to ensure that the poor of the world benefit and that future of the world is stable and safe.
After Seattle, we had Prague, Washington and the May day demonstrations in our own country. There has been a strange mixture of forces, including some very nasty elements determined to use violence. It is extraordinary that people travel across the world at great expense to smash up McDonald's, even though there are plenty of McDonald's in their home countries. Such people are destructive and unhelpful.
There are some forces that are simply protectionist. The trade union movement in the United States is very small—only about 8 per cent. of American labour—but mobilised large numbers in Seattle to march for protectionism. It was strange, at a time of unprecedented growth in the US, before there had been any glimmer of a downturn, that they wanted to put up trade barriers, because they blamed any job losses—it was a time of major changes in technology, so some jobs went—on international competition and the fact that labour is cheaper in China. Such thinking is dangerous and muddled.
There are some environmental fundamentalists who, in a completely self-contradictory way, organise on the internet meetings at which they discuss how to prevent any investment in modern technology in the poorest parts of the world. They show deep double standards. In a muddled way, they think that the poverty and closeness to nature of a lot of people in Africa and southern Asia gives them a better standard of life. They enjoy all the fruits of the technology brought to us by multinational capital, but do not want the poorest continents and people to share in that.
All those groups advocate very undesirable policies and can be taken on one by one, but when I came back from Seattle, I found that many caring, decent people were deeply confused about the World Trade Organisation and how best to manage international trade. That is dangerous. The last time countries drew back into themselves in a knee-jerk reaction, as many in the United States want to do, was in the 1930s. Because trade and investment flows are becoming so rapid and bringing so much change, there is a danger of isolationism and recession returning.
Against that backdrop, I thought it important to amplify the analysis in our first White Paper, analysing the effect of globalisation on the poorest countries and setting out an agenda to be read more broadly, we hope, and influence public opinion at home and internationally. We need a commitment from Government to seek to manage this era in a way that benefits the poor and gives us a more stable and safer future.
That is the purpose of the second White Paper. I am pleased to say that it has attracted wide international attention. We published 4,000 copies of the first White Paper, which was considered influential and a success. Already, 14,000 copies of the full text of the second White Paper have been distributed in English, with 1,000 in French, Spanish, Portuguese and German. There has already been a reprint of the short introductory version, and 60,000 copies have been printed. The website has had half a million hits, with 11,000 serious visits in which the whole White Paper has been downloaded.
That is good. We need an international debate, and I know that some of the leading figures in the international system have read the White Paper, because they have talked to me about it. I hope that some of the MobGlob—I understand that some of these people who turn up to destroy international meetings call themselves that—

might read it, and that some of the more intelligent among them might be encouraged to think more seriously and in a more forward-looking way about what is to be done.
From meetings in this country, I have detected a change of view about the WTO, and an understanding that it is membership-based, with countries joining by choice. People used to think that it was run by multinational companies. Three quarters of its membership are developing countries, and that gives us the possibility of having a multilateral, rules-based international trading body that makes decisions by consensus, holding the world together and bringing more justice to the poor of the world. To lose such institutions would throw the world into far more division, with the rich and powerful bullying and further marginalising the rest.
Apart from its attempt to influence public opinion on how to manage this era in a forward-looking way, the White Paper—I say this largely in honour of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge)—contains a strong series of commitments across Government to trying to manage change in a way that benefits the poor, securing greater world stability.
There is a superb historical role for Britain. I think that it was Dean Rusk who said that we had lost an empire and never found a role. We all understand that comment. We are an open, trading, multicultural country with links with all parts of the world. We have a lot of influential positions on the international stage, because of both the bad and the good in our history. We are involved in the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Commonwealth and the European Union, which is the largest single market in the world and the biggest destination for the exports of developing countries. To use our international influence to work for a more inclusive and just world that takes better account of the needs of poor people and countries is a fine role for the UK.
I hope that, across parties, we can hone a deeper and more informed commitment to that objective. In that way, Britain could make an important contribution to the world in the coming era.

Mr. Andrew Rowe: Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the most useful things that the Commonwealth could do is to identify the big global issues—electoral practices could be one example—on which it could make a major contribution, rather than, as it sometimes seems to do, trying to produce valuable programmes that are very like those produced by other organisations?

Clare Short: Yes. There is such a clear role for the Commonwealth. It has tantalised many people, because it involves relationships of genuine affection that people want to sustain, despite historical forces pulling in the other direction. There are many countries outside it that could join: one thinks of Afghanistan, the US and the Palestinian Authority. Rwanda would love to join, and is trying to convince us that there is a small part of Rwanda that was once colonised by Britain. We are all worried about its not having a role, yet people have such affection for it and there are still countries wanting to join.
In this era, in which we need to strengthen multinational institutions and reach agreements about how to manage the world economy by consensus—that is a


fantastic task—the Commonwealth has a distinctive potential role, as it encompasses so much of the world. The consensus that it can generate could be taken into the appropriate multilateral institution to facilitate agreement on how to create a fairer world.

Dr. Jenny Tonge: I am enjoying the Secretary of State's exposition of her vision, which I share, of Britain's future role in the world. Does she agree that, by pursuing policies of globalisation and development, we will help to solve the problem that the media are interested in and go on about day in, day out: asylum seekers and economic migrants?

Clare Short: I strongly agree. There are more refugees and asylum seekers in the world than there have ever been, and more of them are being housed in some of the poorest countries. There are more displaced people in Africa than ever before—from memory, about 10.5 million. Tanzania, one of the world's poorest countries, is host to 300,000 refugees. That is misery for the people concerned and for their continent and its future. Clearly, many people are also seeking to come to Europe, where there are better economic prospects. It is cruel to turn refugees away without examining the forces that are pushing them out of their own countries, because everyone prefers to stay in their own countries, given the chance. The creation of a world of equal development, where people have the chance of education and a decent life at home and the opportunity to travel out of interest and to share ideas with each other, is achievable in a 50-year time span. That should be our objective, instead of the erection of barriers around our own country. That cannot be the solution.
No matter how privileged a country is, it cannot control the future of world trade rules, the international environment or the level of conflict. Africa, the continent in the greatest trouble with disease and other problems, is on Europe's doorstep, so we cannot make even the richest and most privileged children or countries safe. We either manage the world more effectively or the catastrophes will bite back at all of us, wherever we live.
I am proud of the fact that, increasingly, it is the UK's view that we should have a coherent attitude to the international economy. For example, we should examine international trade negotiations not only from the perspective of what we can achieve for the UK—although of course we must look after our own interests—but from that of whether they will lead to a more sustainable and fairer international system. We are getting a reputation for taking that approach, and our influence on making the international system more collaborative, coherent and focused on the systematic reduction of poverty is increasing. I hope that that work will continue for many years, whichever party forms the Government. It is a profound, historical and moral approach, but we cannot be complacent whatever we do because so many people are so poor and suffer so greatly.
Some people talk themselves into depression on those issues, as if everything is getting worse. That is not so. More human beings are being educated—including more girls—living longer and having access to clean water than ever before. Partly because of that, more human beings are surviving and the world population is growing.
More people have done better; but there are more people, so we have to ensure that the solutions we have found reach those people. The world population will stabilise as girls go to school and more people have a chance of a decent life, but if we do not increase our efforts there will be more and more catastrophes. We have made a contribution, but there is more to do and no one who cares about the issues can be complacent and think that enough has been done.
The White Paper starts by clarifying the term globalisation, because it is the source of muddle in the international debate. Some people think that it means what neo-liberalism meant some years ago: letting the market and inequality rip and rolling back the state. In the era when those ideas were dominant, public services were run down and poor people were excluded from health care and education, as happened in Africa, Latin America and other areas. Those people opposed those ideas, see globalisation as a continuation, and therefore oppose it. I understand those emotions, but that is a muddled view of what globalisation means.
Globalisation started, perhaps, with the ancient Egyptians. It has existed since humanity started to trade, share ideas and technologies and move around the world. It accelerated at the time of the industrial revolution, with more production, manufacturing and trade across the world, and it has accelerated massively recently for two reasons. The first is the end of the cold war. We now have one global economy, instead of two blocs, and that integration has speeded up the movement of capital, investment and ideas across the world. The second is the new technologies. Information technology moves ideas around the world very fast, so capital is more mobile. That has led to a reduction in barriers to trade and a fall in the cost of international transactions. The global economy is therefore much more integrated now than it was even 10 years ago.
The good side of globalisation, which is rarely mentioned, is the diffusion of global norms and values, including the spread of democracy. More people—around 62 per cent., although some would argue about some countries on the margins—live in a democracy. The proliferation of global agreements on the environment, such as those on ozone-depleting substances, biodiversity and development targets, are the beginning of a global ethic of morality and the inclusion of all. That expectation of the same norms and values is an attractive part of globalisation.
Globalisation also brings with it rapid change and new challenges. The scale and rapidity of the change has generated uncertainty, anxiety and alarm across the world, including in our own country. Rapid change is difficult for us all to deal with, but that distrust and worry creates the danger that regressive political movements could start to appeal to people. There are also worries about the impact of globalisation on people's culture. For example, some deplore Hollywoodisation, with everybody eating hamburgers and watching the same films. The White Paper acknowledges those fears, but it argues that we are more likely to end up with such a world if the poorest countries are all marginalised and their cultures disrespected. In a world of equal development, in which different languages, cultures and music are respected, that danger will recede.
People rightly also worry about the environment and the inequality within and between countries. Many people believe that such inequality is growing, but international equality has narrowed recently; it depends on the speed of development and economic growth in the poorest countries. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries tend to trog along at 3 per cent. growth a year, and inequality will grow or shrink depending on whether poor countries do worse or better than that. The White Paper analyses the performance of individual countries, and some of the poor and middle-income countries that have opened up and liberalised have become more equal. Others have become less equal, but that is a matter of political choice, not a result of an invincible force that responds to globalisation.
The White Paper proposes ways in which the world can manage the forces of globalisation so that they are beneficial to humanity. The lesson of history is clear: open societies that learn from and trade with others are enriched materially and culturally. Societies that encourage education and services for all, that use modern technology and that distribute the resources of economic growth broadly are more civilised, just, decent, comfortable, happy and stable. That is how we should manage in this era, and those who turn their back on that approach will not bring its benefits to their countries.
In recent decades, those countries that have seized the opportunities offered by more open world markets to increase exports, and attract inward investment and modern technology, have made the greatest strides in reducing poverty. More people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 30 years than in the previous 500. The east Asian countries have performed spectacularly. China's performance in the past 15 years in the systematic reduction of the numbers of people living in abject poverty has been welcome, even though China may have other aspects—such as its treatment of Hong Kong—that we do not find attractive. Countries that liberalise sensibly, educate their people and have decent standards and access to modern technology can achieve the sort of economic growth that reduces poverty rapidly. We want to bring those lessons to parts of the world that have not benefited, especially Africa.
We are on track to reach the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, but that is because of the performance of China, India and Bangladesh, although there is much to do still in those countries. Some countries in Africa have reached that level, including Uganda, Mozambique and Botswana, but many have not. We could reach the target, yet large parts of Africa could continue to experience the misery of high levels of conflict and human suffering. We have to do better to bring progress to all countries.
Globalisation is creating an unprecedented opportunity to lift millions of the world's poorest people out of poverty. That can be done if we organise ourselves and share the ideas that make it possible, but it is not inevitable.
We are at a crossroads. Many countries could be marginalised and left to suffer in squalor and poverty while the rest of the world gets more wealthy. That would be morally repugnant and dangerous. As information is globalised, people will be able to see their own poverty and others' prosperity, and they will not accept it. The anger thus created could cause all sorts of disaster for everyone.
The White Paper argues that if the poorest countries can be drawn into the global economy and are thereby able to export goods and increase their access to modern knowledge and technology, the world could make massive progress towards the removal of abject poverty from the human condition. If we define poverty in relative terms, it may be true that the poor will always be with us, but abject poverty can be eradicated. It disappeared from Europe and north America at the time of the industrial revolution in the 1840s and 1850s. That shows that eradicating abject poverty from the world is an achievable objective.

Ms Oona King: I apologise to the House for being in and out of the debate because of my duties in Standing Committee, but my right hon. Friend spoke about drawing poorer countries into global trade. Is she going to speak about the definitions of pro-poor growth, on which I know that the Department has been working? Does she consider that some areas of growth are more likely to draw more people out of poverty more quickly than others? If so, will the Department do more work on that possibility?

Clare Short: I am coming to that, but it is not a complicated proposition. More research can always be done into how progress can be made more efficiently, but pro-poor growth is inclusive. Non-governmental organisations and people working in the development sector used to argue about whether growth was necessary or desirable when it came to reducing poverty, but that was ridiculous. Population growth without economic growth means that poverty will grow invincibly. That has been evident in some countries, especially in Africa.
However, growth that is not sustainable—such as that depending on the extraction of mineral resources that are not replaced—does not lift up a country. Growth whose proceeds go exclusively to one group does not reduce poverty, but rather maximises the risk of conflict. The research clearly shows that if all a country's people do not benefit from growth, the excluded group is more likely to resort to conflict in the absence of democratic opportunity.
Economic growth has to be sustainable. That means that a country's environment and resources must be taken into account but also, in the modem world, that good education and health care are available.
Education and health care are not just desirable: the technologies of modernity require people to be educated so that they can contribute to their countries and participate in the global economy. The fair distribution of the proceeds of growth means that education and health care are available to all. Economic change often disbenefits one group of people, and Governments have a duty to help them to adjust and find new avenues by which to go forward. If that happens, the sort of growth that brings benefits to everyone, and especially to the poor, can be sustained.
I want to mention inequality. Some of the Latin American countries are the most unequal in the world. For example, enormous wealth and desperate poverty exist side by side in Brazil. It takes longer for growth to reduce poverty in such countries. Unless a country's economic development is strange, the proceeds of growth tend to be distributed fairly evenly, but in very unequal countries the


proceeds that go to the poor are very limited. Questions about the degree of inequality are questions of justice, but removing inequality depends on stability and the speed with which poverty is reduced. That lesson is clear, and measures must be taken to ensure that action is put in hand to reduce poverty.
As I said, extending education and health care to everyone is a fundamental requirement. Ill health is undesirable and causes suffering, but the research shows that poor people work endlessly. They are creative people but they work harder than anyone else in the world as they try to lift their families out of poverty. However, ill health constantly throws people back into poverty. If a family's breadwinner cannot work because of ill health, that family has no income. If a child or a dependant is unwell, the family borrows money—or begs, or sells belongings—to get drugs and health care that is often of very poor quality. Better health is desirable not only for its own sake, but because it helps people improve their lives and the lives of the next generation.
Education and health care are crucial for development. They are to be paid for out of the proceeds of development, but investment in those sectors is one of the ways to secure the conditions necessary for development.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: The Secretary of State mentioned the terrible disparity between the very wealthy and the very poor in South America. Will she comment on the drug barons and the regimes in that part of the world, where there seems to be a vested interest in feeding drug habits and keeping as many people as possible oppressed in poverty? Should not the western world take even more interest in that than it does at present?

Clare Short: The problem of drugs extends world wide. Drugs involve criminality, illegality and instability. Their use by people who are marginalised and often damaged is evident even in countries such as our own. Drug use is a crisis of the era.
Colombia is an example of a country with poor governance, widespread violence and an absence of justice or law. In such countries, very poor people who do not use drugs grow them, as they are the only crops that will secure an income. It is no good persecuting those people: they must be offered the chance of a legitimate life. They need to have the economic well-being that comes with taking legitimate produce to market, and which gives them the chance to send their children to school and to enjoy decent health care.
Too often in the past the focus has been on bombing campaigns. Unless a decent future is promised, people return to growing drugs because that is all that they can do. The drug barons are the only people who will buy such crops, and we must work hard to find more constructive solutions that offer people the chance of decent lives.
For example, the UN spent a lot of money in Afghanistan on paying people not to grow drugs. They stopped, but they started again because they were not offered the chance of decent lives that did not depend on drug production.

Mrs. Gillan: The Secretary of State may know that I have been trying to champion the cause of growing

pyrethrum as an alternative to poppies. It is possible that pyrethrum could be a crop substitute for drug production. Will she look again at my letters to the Department on crop substitution, which offers a way forward for families that depend on growing drugs to feed and clothe their children?

Clare Short: I should be delighted to do so, although I do not think that the hon. Lady has sent me any letters, as I would have read them. I am ashamed to say that I do not know what pyrethrum is.

Mrs. Gillan: It is a variety of chrysanthemum.

Clare Short: Oh, I know what chrysanthemums are. I should be delighted to look at her letters if she sends me copies, but there is more to the problem than finding just one crop substitute. People must also be able to get crops to market and their children to school. If the package on offer is not sufficient to allow people to have legitimate lives, the men with guns will remain in control and people will be unable to move forward.
Pro-poor growth and establishing educated and healthy populations are key requirements in achieving progress. Development assistance is also vital, and we need more of it, but it must be deployed differently. In the past, it has been associated with the charitable mindset. I do not deny the value of charity—we should all care for those in need—but charity consists of handouts to the poor, and it is not development. The task is to use overseas development assistance to create the conditions that enable people to lift up their lives.
To achieve that, we must stop having lots of different, fragmented projects and instead help countries establish the effective institutions of a modern state. Those institutions provide services to a country's people and run the economy in a way that ensures that savings stay at home, that inward investment is secured and that people have access to modern technology. In that way, a country's economy can grow in a way that benefits all.
The White Paper commits us to increase United Kingdom development assistance as a proportion of gross domestic product to 0.33 per cent. by 2003–04—a 45 per cent. increase. We are also allocating progressively more to low-income countries and untying our development assistance, for which we have had all-party support. However, we could do better and that I hope we will have all-party support to help us continue making progress so that we reach the UN target of 0.7 per cent. I am delighted to tell the House that after 32 years of trying, we have agreement with the OECD Development Assistance Committee that aid to the least developed countries will be untied. That is very important, because when aid is tied, supplies have to come from the giving country. It is motivated by trade connections, leads to growth inefficiency and does not enable countries to put in place the institutions that they need to go forward.
We must build an international system focused on the systematic reduction of poverty. We have been working on that with some success, but there is more to be done. The UN is precious—nothing can replace it—but it could be more efficient. I am haunted by Sierra Leone. We will succeed there, but UN peacekeeping could be more efficient and effective, and we must all work together to achieve that.
We must have fair international rules and strong international institutions to harness private capital and trading opportunities to improve the life of the poor. We must challenge the MobGlob, the mobilisation against globalisation. What they preach is a disaster for the world and for the poor. The systematic reduction of poverty requires greater, not less, international co-operation. Without rules, the strong and the rich will bully the rest. Sovereignty now stays with nation states—it does not go to any other institution, but must be pooled to be exercised. There are some things that countries cannot do on their own. Countries must collaborate with others to produce rules that will benefit everyone. If we cannot do that, we will be in trouble.

Mr. Edward Leigh: I agree with everything that the Secretary of State has said, something that I cannot always say, and I congratulate her on her speech. Will she say something about the need to encourage greater charitable giving in the west? I know that progress has been made with the gift aid scheme and other measures. There is a limit to what the taxpayer in the developed world will pay, yet we would all like to spend much more on international development.

Clare Short: People in this country are very generous. That is also true of the USA, which is not always as governmentally committed to development and often thinks, perhaps because it is such a big country, that it can secure all that it needs unilaterally. In the United Kingdom, people provide £400 million a year to development NGOs and the taxpayer tops that up with another £195 million or so a year. Dues paid into the international system have come to just over £3 billion this year, and at 0.7 per cent. of GDP, that figure would be roughly £7 billion.
People are generous when it comes to charitable giving, but we also want to make a contribution to countries, and there are some things that charities cannot do. Some countries have rotten financial systems and need better management of their public finances. A charity cannot put that right. We are working to educate public opinion in this country; there is no question that people, especially the young, who will inherit the future care about the poor of the world. However, when asked what can be done, they say "Give to charity." That is honourable and I admire it, but we need to call for fairer trade rules and international environment agreements along with stronger UN peacekeeping capacity so that citizens can use their democratic power to achieve the conditions necessary to make the progress that we want to see.
I have three final points. First, it is increasingly clear that no matter what one's economic, political or geographic perspective, in a globalising world, eliminating poverty is more important than ever. We live in a world in which great wealth and great squalor exist side by side. The immorality of that is clear, but in a globalising world we also need to focus more actively on poverty elimination to secure future stability and prosperity for all. The dangers for the future are environmental degradation, conflict and diseases for which we have no cure, such as HIV/AIDS and multi-drug-resistant TB. Some 20 per cent. of the population in our neighbouring continent, Africa, live under conditions of conflict. That causes enormous suffering. Refugee movement is a barrier to development, and the issue of asylum seekers will affect Europe.
This is about our safety and more justice in the world. It is a priority; we know what to do. We live in a time of unprecedented knowledge, technology and capital. We know the conditions that produce development; we must be intelligent in applying them more broadly and collaborating internationally. In that way, we can make massive progress.
Secondly, we are living in a time of profound change. There is intellectual and political mind-lag in the world. Some institutions are attending to the agenda of 50 years ago. We must move our political institutions and thinking forward so that these issues are regarded as a priority for the safety of the future. We must do everything that we can to get more people to involve more people. The White Paper is designed to help in that way.
Finally, I believe that there is more cynicism and negativism in the media and in much political commentary than there has been in my lifetime. Everyone is supposed to have an ulterior motive. There is no room for decent and honest disagreement—we must all carp and sneer. I do not like that—it is not a pleasant way of proceeding politically, and it is also dangerous. We could achieve massive historical change, but for that, people need to work together and believe that it is possible to collaborate. If cynicism takes over, we will not achieve that.
This is a wonderful role for Britain; we can make an important contribution to the world. However, people must raise their sights to see where the need is and what is possible. If they work together to achieve that, we could have a world in which the extremes of poverty that existed in this country in the 1850s have gone from the world. Every child would be educated, and the world would be safer and more decent. All of us who have been able to contribute to that in any way can be proud of our part in political life.

Mr. Gary Streeter: I am very glad to follow the Secretary of State. I hope to make a speech in a similar vein. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), I agree with everything that the right hon. Lady said—to my concern and, probably, her distress. The silent one on our Front Bench is now scribbling furiously in a little blue book.
I share the Secretary of State's vision about the contribution that this country can make to international development, peacekeeping, diplomacy and bringing people together. We are uniquely qualified to do those things. We are not a superpower; we have lost our empire and have, for some years, been in search of a role, and I think this is it. We can punch above our weight, bring people together and seek to make real inroads into abject poverty. I agree with the right hon. Lady that we are at a crossroads in terms of globalisation. The international community and Governments throughout the world need to make the right choice. We must ensure that we encourage them to do so.
As has been said, the British people have repeatedly shown their concern for the world's poorest through their generous response to recent crises in Kosovo, central America, Mozambique and Gujarat, the inspirational Jubilee 2000 campaign and their consistent support, year in, year out, for excellent British aid agencies. Many of our constituents have already sent us a clear signal: they


want our country to be at the forefront in the attack on global poverty. I certainly agree that, at present, the House does not do justice to the seriousness of that subject.
At this point in my speech, I had intended to make some sneaky and sneering party political points about the absence of debate, but I have decided not to make them—[HON. MEMBERS: "Go on, go on!"] No, I am overwhelmed by the spirit of consensus and am reluctant to break out of its orbit.
The Conservatives broadly welcome the thrust of the Government's White Paper. We certainly pay tribute to the Department for International Development for all its excellent work on behalf of the whole House and of the country. I want briefly to explore the working title of the White Paper. I do not want to consider its chapters in detail, because we have all grown familiar with the contents over the past few months; I want to look more closely at its excellent title—"Making Globalisation Work for the Poor". That is much more than a title; it is the very essence of what we have to achieve as we go forward in the next 20 or 30 years.
One of the key points about development is that there must be a long-term view. As politicians, our focus is usually on the next general election, which is probably in about four weeks—not much time to achieve anything significant—while international institutions and multinational corporations are worried about their next shareholders' meeting and so on. However, if we are really to make progress, we have to act on a much longer-term basis than that.
There is no question but that the abject poverty we see in the world is wholly unacceptable. As the Secretary of State said, we know that throughout history a significant proportion of the world's population has always been extremely poor. Perhaps the difference nowadays is that we are much more aware of that fact and that if we have the will and if we get our act together, we have the wherewithal to do much, much more about it.
In the developed world, we do not have to look back far to find a time when in this country, other western European countries and the United States of America, there was rampant poverty, with disease, child labour, sweatshops and urban squalor. In this country, not long ago, the poor were completely disfranchised, but through trial and error, and by pursuing sound social and economic policies during several generations, we and other countries have established the rule of law. Usually, benign governance, free markets and private enterprise produce material comforts and security for all.
As the Secretary of State said, our challenge is to ensure that the same progress is made throughout the entire world. The good news is that it can be much quicker for developing countries which choose the right way than it was for us. They can learn from our mistakes and our experience. Despite some of the mindless chanting and banners of the protesters in London on May day, the truth is that globalisation, if correctly harnessed, is not the enemy of the poor but the very vehicle whereby the world's poorest can be lifted out of poverty.
It is worth reminding ourselves why our goal should be to seek the eradication of abject global poverty. I am sure that everyone in the House at present—although perhaps not everyone in the country—agrees that it is morally

unacceptable to witness the horrors of grinding poverty, especially when we have so much wealth. As I said, not everyone feels like that—we should not condemn those who say that charity begins at home and that global poverty has nothing to do with us. Such things are said, but we should gently remind those people of two facts.
First, global poverty leads to global instability, conflict and disease. One way of minimising the risk that future wars will affect our own country is to help to improve living standards and to establish proper democratic frameworks in developing countries. This is a passion of mine: even in greater Europe, the one way to ensure that our children do not have to engage in a 21st century European war is to make sure that the former Soviet countries in central and eastern Europe are welcomed into the European Union as soon as is reasonably practicable. Momentum towards the EU will underpin the rule of law, market economies and fragile democracies in the states that suffered so much under communism. There is a price for us in taking on board those new members, who will need much support for many years. However, the cost of the alternative is immeasurably higher.
Secondly, as living standards improve and market-based economies begin to flourish in more and more places, so the trading and investment opportunities for our businesses will increase, underpinning our own economic prosperity in the north. Thus, for the person who is not minded to go down the route of moral acceptability, there are two reasons why compassion and self-interest combine to motivate our attack on global poverty.
I am convinced that globalisation is the key to unlocking global poverty, and it need not take the many generations that it took us to figure it all out. A stable political framework, the rule of law, open economies, free trade. competition and a strong private sector are all part of the conditions necessary to produce economic growth, jobs and prosperity. A real consensus is growing among politicians, economists, financiers, commentators and some leading NGOs about the true benefits of globalisation, and about the key political and economic policies that will bring benefits to the countries that pursue them. The evidence is clear: countries with more open economies, and which have implemented policies to support and attract inward investment and trade, have recorded the best growth performance.
Not many years ago, Asia was poorer than Africa. However, because many Asian countries embraced strategies and policies that transformed many of them, they have made significant advances, while Africa, in most cases, sadly has not. Those Asian countries encouraged savings, investment, education and the rule of law and many of them have reaped the benefits.
The great irony, however, is that while that consensus has been growing among politicians, commentators, experts and economists, another consensus has been building to the contrary—as the Secretary of State mentioned. More and more people see globalisation and global capitalism not as the vehicles to defeat abject poverty, but as problems in themselves. That opposition has been growing for several years among people who profess to care for the world's poorest—and I am sure they do care. So we have had the Seattle riots and our own May day protests—egged on by such books as the best-selling "No Logo", by Naomi Klein, which takes a pot shot at globalisation.
That situation should concern us and I want to make several points about it—I did not know that those protesters were called the MobGlob, but the expression is apt. As we know from our own surgeries and postbags and from the public meetings we sometimes attend, there seems to be a growing belief that there would be no global poverty if multinational corporations did not exist, if the World Bank and the IMF stopped imposing conditions on their financial support, and if debt everywhere was cancelled. That simplistic approach is mobilising more and more support against the very policies and organisations which most of us believe contain the long-term solutions.
Many decent, caring, well-intentioned people are beginning to hold those views. I am sure that I cannot be the only Member to be receiving more letters and more visits to my surgery from people who express those views and who want us to take that simplistic approach. Does that matter? I think it does, because if those views spread in people's minds, they become a distraction from solutions that might work. It does matter if a lot of well-intentioned people put their energies into ideas and solutions that are likely to make things worse for the world's poorest. Those protesters need to be told that they are fighting to keep people poor. Rather than breaking windows in McDonald's, would not it be a better idea to set up businesses that employ people in the developing world and so create prosperity?
I agree with the Secretary of State that if such opinions grow and take root, they could easily pull us back into a protectionist world that would be very serious and dangerous for us all. It is interesting that commentators acknowledge that just before the first world war, the world was extremely integrated—possibly even more so than today, given the lack of technology. It took shifts in public opinion, increased protectionism and global conflict to drive a wedge into that growing integration.
The onus is on us consistently to make the case for the free trade economic growth model and not to allow ourselves to be distracted. I congratulate the Secretary of State as I believe that she has done that; she has been brave in some of her speeches. I encourage her to continue doing that for the next three or four weeks while she remains in her position—[Interruption.] I did not say where she would be after that.
We must pose the question: what is the alternative? Now that centrally planned economies have failed the world over and modern technologies have rendered untenable an exclusively local and protectionist approach, what is the alternative to globalisation harnessed in the right way?

Clare Short: I do not think that we should be embarrassed by such agreement; we are talking about enormously profound and important issues for everyone's future. Indonesia grew with horrible corruption and repression, but the beauty of the lessons of the Asian financial crisis—provided that we can help people and that the suffering is not too great—is that we have reached the point where that model is not sustainable. In fact, democracy, inclusion, dealing with corruption and bringing education and health care to all represent the

stable model, so we have refined the model that is most successful economically in a way that advances the condition of humanity.

Mr. Streeter: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that intervention. It is absolutely right to look for sustainable models, not flashes in the pan. We are looking for things that will last, and the Indonesian model and perhaps those of one or two other Asian tigers have shown themselves to be unsustainable, because they did not put in place the necessary political stability, transparency and perhaps the freedom from rank corruption, so I certainly agree with the Secretary of State.
We must make the case for globalisation, harnessed as best we can, although I am sure that many mistakes will be made. If we do not make that case, we will be in danger of letting the arguments go by default and increasing the sense of alienation and disenchantment with the political process as a whole that is felt by a growing number of people.
I would be the first to accept that globalisation is not producing equality. Richer nations have thus far benefited more than poorer ones. Indeed, some of the world's poorest nations have so far been almost entirely excluded from the real economic benefits, but that does not mean that globalisation is not the solution, just that we have not yet driven the process far enough forward. However, that does not need to be the case if those nations can be helped to choose a different path by which they, too, can prosper.
Decisions made in Uganda in recent years have been better, on average, than those made by the Government in Zimbabwe, and the people of Uganda have benefited. Policies pursued in Taiwan have helped its people march into prosperity, while the decisions made in North Korea have had the reverse effect. Countries can choose prosperity in a globalising world.
Our goal is not equality—although some people think that it should be—and perhaps it is not even relativity; it is surely to see absolute living standards rise, so that everyone has access to shelter, food, water, reasonable education and health care. That should certainly be our goal. Some people point the finger at the multinational corporations and blame them for not doing enough to improve living standards for the poor. Of course, their primary goal is to make a profit. That will always be the case, which is as it should be, but by investing in developing countries they will, over time, bring economic growth with them. That is happening all over the world.
The best of our multinational corporations are increasingly aware that they have some responsibility for the communities in which they invest, on wage levels, child labour, environmental stewardship and other issues. I shall cite some famous names that are bound to fill the MobGlob world with fury, but BP, Nestlé, Gap and Nike all employ people in developing countries. They are not the anti-Christ. No doubt they can do things differently and no doubt they can improve their commitment to local communities; and they should be held to account—through whatever stakeholder power is available and through our consumer choices—for the commitments that they make to corporate and social responsibility, which are now a common feature of their annual reports. They say such things, and we are entitled to hold them to account for them, but they do not deserve the vilification that the anti-capitalists have heaped on them.
Globalisation is happening. It has been going on for generations. Modern technology has speeded up the process and, short of unforeseen disasters, the momentum of globalisation seems set fair to continue. We in the Conservative party recognise that and broadly welcome it, and we have designed development policies that are intended to help to shape globalisation in a way that benefits the world's poorest. In the second part of my speech, I shall therefore briefly set out the four key development policies that we shall pursue in government to help to maximise the forces of globalisation for good, not ill.
First, we shall focus on good governance, as we have made clear in our policy papers. I have talked about that endlessly; I am even getting bored with hearing myself speak about it—a serious state of affairs. I accept that the DFID is currently focused on good governance, but we shall make it an even higher priority. My observations and experience, drawn from the past two years, show that the state and quality of governance in a developing country is absolutely critical and fundamental to its success in choosing to enter into prosperity.
Decisions by national Governments remain at the heart of a nation's fortunes. Although globalisation is all about what happens in the entire world, we all recognise that nation states still remain extremely important. Without good governance, the rule of law and a willingness to embrace market economies, the framework for prosperity is simply not in place. I am not talking about a "one size fits all" approach, but I accept that we can advocate nothing but democracy. Some countries have embraced market economies when they are not fully democracies—we are all a little concerned about Uganda and the succession strategy there; but, from our experience, we can only advocate democracy and, certainly, benign government—one of the key fundamentals that must be in place.
I should like to read a brief extract from the World Bank report "Poverty in an age of Globalisation", just to make the point. Page 9 states:
Good governance has emerged as one of the most important prerequisites for development. This is both because of the role of government as a builder and provider of institutions, and because the failure of governance can lead to an overall political breakdown. Weak governance has been an overriding characteristic of the poorest performing economies"—
no surprises there.
The next Conservative Government will do more to help to build good governance. That is our unique governmental contribution to global poverty. I know that the policy is long term, intangible and difficult to measure, but it is vital. As part of our policy, we want the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the British Council to increase their work in democracy building and governance. We want to see more support for political parties overseas. Strange as it may seem to some of us, political parties are actually rather important organisations, and their establishment in many of the countries that we are talking about is very important, especially if they are rooted in the community and open to all. We will seek to support strong civil society, and we will draw upon the experience of the know-how fund and make British expertise available, especially in the civil service, judicial and security sectors.
There is one thing that we know how to do well in this country—collect tax. That represents the sort of expertise that many countries would be very keen to draw on, and we will make that the primary focus. That will be the best way to meet international development targets, which we support. The best contribution that we can make to poverty reduction and to producing a poverty focus throughout the world is to help to strengthen the framework of countries with which we are working, so that the private sector and foreign direct investment can do their jobs in increasing living standards in such countries.
Our second and related focus will be to bear down on corruption. We all know of the reality in many countries. I was interested to read some recent research by Mr. de Soto, a Peruvian economist, who found that corruption and poor bureaucracy represented a real block to enterprise in many countries. He wrote:
In the Philippines, to formalise a squatter's house built on state-owned land can require 168 steps involving 53 public and private agencies and taking between 13 and 25 years.
In Malawi, the bureaucracy that administers property law is, in the words of an official report, riddled with jurisdictional overlaps and internal conflicts, and is often the cause of delays, errors of judgment, lack of coordination, rampant corruption and dereliction of duty.
We want to bear down on such corruption, wherever we possibly can. We shall be rigorous in withdrawing development assistance where there is evidence of misuse, and we shall encourage other donors to do the same. We will review the increasing use of sector-wide funding plans, which are clearly more open to misuse than more strictly monitored financial support.

Clare Short: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. An effective modern state goes beyond democracy and human rights, proper tax collection, the proper management of public finances, the rule of law and people having the right to property so that they can build houses, which is important for many slum dwellers, and so on. All that is absolutely key and we are increasingly moving towards it, but sector-wide approaches involve building an effective state, and they replace an old approach that went outside the state because there was corruption. We must take the risk and become engaged in helping countries develop their financial management systems and those by which they deliver services to their people. That is what sector-wide approaches involve. I therefore agree 100 per cent. with the hon. Gentleman about wanting to work more on corruption and effective government. I agree with the diagnosis completely and that is what we are doing, but he has a contradictory objective in wanting to move away from sector-wide approaches—they go together.

Mr. Streeter: The jury is still out on this. Even the Overseas Development Institute said in its recent report of 1 May that the sector-wide plans
have lacked good evidence on how poverty is being addressed and with what effect.
The Secretary of State may well be right, but I was simply saying that the jury is still out and that I would review sector-wide funding, not abolish it, on 8 June.
We do part company, however, on my third point for putting in place the best possible development policy to harness the forces of globalisation for good, not ill.


I profoundly disagree with the Secretary of State about the charitable sector. We Conservatives want to build a new partnership with the charitable sector. We want to do much more to encourage and harness the energy and compassion of the British people and our aid charities. I accept that there are many developments that only Governments and multilateral organisations can undertake, but there is a massive role for the charitable sector. Most important, it can build long-term, committed relationships, people to people, which Governments can never do.
The Secretary of State said that charities are really about handouts and that she was talking about sustainable development. Of course we want sustainable development, but I visited a project in south-west Rwanda—I could list several dozen and I am sure the Secretary of State could, too—where a few years ago people were hungry. World Vision was sponsoring a project there whereby an agricultural expert from Ghana was teaching farmers how to increase massively the yield on their hilltop farms, partly by terracing and partly by better husbandry. After the three-year project, the yields were significantly increased and the people were no longer hungry. Indeed, they had surplus to sell, with which they bought cows. I was introduced to the cows, of which they were so very proud.

Clare Short: Did they have foot and mouth?

Mr. Streeter: No, they did not have foot and mouth.

Clare Short: They have it in Rwanda.

Mr. Streeter: I hope that those dear cows to which I was introduced do not have foot and mouth. They were of the "Phoenix the calf' variety: extremely desirable—I do not mean to eat. As I was saying, the farmers were no longer hungry and they could sell their surplus crops. Most significantly, they were passing on their new skills to other farmers in the region. I think that that is sustainable development and I know that the Secretary of State does too. That was achieved through a long-term relationship established by a charity that was doing the right thing. I could cite many other examples. That is absolutely at the heart of international development.

Mr. Leigh: Does my hon. Friend think that we have anything to learn from US tax regimes in making sure that we are a generous society in terms is of donations to charities?

Mr. Streeter: That is the direction in which we want to go. Government cannot do it all. The British people are very compassionate and give generously and often in response to humanitarian crises, but they do not have much confidence in our public development schemes—or at least that is what the recent survey indicated.
We must do more to encourage the charitable sector. We want to encourage people to give more and we want the charitable sector to do the right thing in terms of a strategy that we agree with it. We Conservatives have thus pledged ourselves to double the amount that the DFID spends through NGOs and charities over the lifetime of a Government. We want to make sure that money is available to large and small NGOs and that we work more closely with the charitable sector in making a real long-term difference.
We will set up a web-based, one-stop-shop information and advice service. As I have said before, I really believe in this; I ought to as it is my idea. I offered this idea, called aid direct, to the Secretary of State and I hope that she has looked at it. The idea is to provide up-to-the-minute information about the situation in each developing country, with inputs from embassies, NGOs and major corporations working there. It is so often the case that people who want to make a contribution and a difference do not know how to start or what to do for the best in a particular country. As a result, we get overlap and duplication and people get frustrated and turn away. More information and up-to-the-minute advice, matching needs and resources, is what we have in mind. It could be a very effective facility for encouraging an even better performance from the charitable sector.

Clare Short: I know that the hon. Gentleman is keen on this. In the course of my life, I have found that most good ideas have already been thought of by someone. The Royal Bank is in the process of trying to do that for the whole international development system, so that in any given country everybody knows what everybody else is doing and they all have access to the information. The idea is a good one, but it is in hand.

Mr. Streeter: The Secretary of State said that the idea is in hand, but it is not yet in existence. We have checked carefully but there is nothing in the whole world or on the world wide web along the lines that I am suggesting. It would be great if it were put in place. We do not mind our best ideas being pinched. Indeed, in this party we are used to that—it has been happening for at least 10 years and we were getting pretty cheesed off with it. However, we want this to happen because it will provide a real service to people who want to make a difference.
Finally, in government we propose to make sure that globalisation is harnessed for good, and not for ill, by reviewing the performance of all multilateral organisations. We recognise that although the nation state remains dominant, there is a need for multilateral agencies and combined resources. We accept that, but we want them to perform well and to offer value for money. We have often spoken about the European Union aid programme. Our policy on that is well known: unless the recent reforms produce vast improvements, we will work for a treaty change to allow member states to opt out of much of the EU aid contribution, and so spend the same money much more effectively.
We are unhappy about the lack of true accountability of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and about the performance of the UN. The UN should do less, better. We want to champion the cause for reform of the important organisations which, sadly, have too often been under-achievers. We want the World Trade Organisation to concentrate on smoothing the path of global free trade.

Mr. Robathan: I hate to disagree with the profound consensus that has built up in the Chamber this afternoon, but does my hon. Friend share my unease from the White Paper that Britain will be channelling more money through multilaterals and the UN family than we have


done up to now while working for reform? Does he agree that it would be best for reform to take place before we channel more money into such agencies?

Mr. Streeter: My hon. Friend is right. When I launched our well-received policy documents, I said that on the day we came to power—on my first day as Secretary of State for International Development—I would seek an urgent review of all our contributions to all multilateral agencies, particularly UN agencies, to make sure that we were getting value for money and doing the right thing in spending British taxpayers' money in that way. We can use the threat of withdrawal of that money to push for more reform.

Clare Short: The House might like to know the figures. As a Government, of our £3 billion we give £195 million through British NGOs, £172 million through the World Bank and £152 million through UN development agencies, some of which is compulsory as a member of the UN. People think that the UN is massive, but the British NGOs take more of British taxpayers' money than the UN development system or, indeed, the World Bank.

Mr. Streeter: Is the Secretary of State right on that point? My recollection is that £1.4 billion is spent through multilateral agencies—half through the EU and half largely through the UN and various organisations which are part of it—but we can take this offline. We need to make sure that whatever is spent through the UN represents value for money and that British taxpayers are getting the best possible bang for their buck.
In conclusion, I pay tribute to two colleagues who are retiring at the general election. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) has been a champion of many causes throughout the developing world. Of course, I pay tribute also to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells). I think that this is the fifth such tribute that has been paid to him. He has retired several times already. [Interruption.] Yes, he is doing an impersonation of Frank Sinatra. He has been an outstanding Chairman of the Select Committee on International Development and is respected on both sides of the House. We will miss him very much and hope that he will find new life in the development sector after 7 June, if that is when we leave this place.
In conclusion, globalisation is happening and is part of the world in which we live. As all of us have said, we are at a point where there is a historic opportunity to make a genuine difference for the world's poorest people. The choices that we make will determine whether we seize that moment. The next Conservative Government will seek to harness the forces of globalisation by helping countries to strengthen their Governments, bearing down on corruption, entering into a new partnership with British charities and championing reform of global financial architecture. All that we need now is an early opportunity to put our ideas into practice.

Mr. Tom Clarke: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter). I did not say that last time that I

did so, because he did not deserve such comments, but I think that he is getting a little better. I was impressed with his optimism, as I think that the whole House was. Perhaps he went a bit over the top about what he would do in his first day in office, but I think that we can forgive him for that. As always, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rose to the occasion and was massively impressive in leading the debate.
Having mentioned those two speeches, I hope that I can be forgiven for opening my remarks by referring to another speech that was made a long time ago. I am inspired to do so because one of the documents provided by the Department for international Development refers to the commanding heights of the global economy. I suddenly realised on reading those words that it had rightly become fashionable again to quote Aneurin Bevan. I hope that I might also be allowed to introduce a bit of empiricism, as I want to refer to the first Labour party conference that I ever attended. Indeed, I made my first speech at the conference. The Leader of the Opposition made his first such speech at 16, but I was an elder statesman, as I made mine at the age of 18.
However, the conference was remembered not so much for my speech as for what was, sadly, the last speech of Aneurin Bevan. I think that he died seven or eight months later. I want to draw to the attention of the House to the following point: Aneurin Bevan said that, in his experience, the burdens of public office were far too heavy to be borne for trivial ends. I genuinely believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has taken that message on board. Her Department is not about red boxes and chauffeur-driven cars. The work that is going on in the Department at Victoria—and, if I may say so, at East Kilbride—and elsewhere is constructive and is based on responding to the modern world and the challenges that are presented by the universe of today.
The White Paper reflects those views. It is practical and relevant, but it is also thematic in terms of tackling poverty and of grasping the possibility of promoting global social justice My right hon. Friend will agree that those two aims often go together. The White Paper raises issues such as humanitarian relief, education, health and the great problem of world debt, but it also does something else to which this debate has added: it challenges us to remember that there is still a poverty of ideas.
That is why I believe that the media have not quite caught up with the need to respond to the problems, although in the very nature of things, they have made a substantial contribution in bringing those problems into people's living rooms. Among other things, that explains why international development has taken off in the current Parliament. Day after day, people are seeing on their television sets starvation in Ethiopia and the tragedies in India, EI Salvador, Mozambique, Kosovo and East Timor. They rightly expect the sort of response that the Government have provided. Tragically, they are seeing fratricidal warfare in Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere, and they know that we must deal with the consequences of those terrible situations. They have also seen the obscenity of landmines in Angola and Afghanistan. I think that they genuinely welcome the progress that the Government are making in that regard.
The media are to be commended for bringing those issues to people's homes and into the public domain, but they are failing by not examining as they should the


question of how we can deal constructively with those problems. Their failure to give full coverage to the White Paper shows that they must catch up on that.
Nevertheless, the White Paper, the Government's thinking and the progress that has been made in the past four years have given me great hope. People want the sort of matters that have been raised, including those that are relevant to the environment, to be addressed. When President Bush made his announcement about his Administration's attitude to the Kyoto protocol, there was an instinctive and genuine feeling of revulsion throughout this country. That feeling was rightly reflected in the House. Apart from the fact that we expect better of a great nation—I am not anti-American in any sense—we also know that more than 77 per cent. of people, if the opinion polls are to be believed, disagree profoundly with the President on this matter. I do not believe that the production of 20 per cent. of carbon dioxide emissions in a country where 4 per cent. of the world population live is acceptable.
The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) made important points about the environment during the recent proceedings of the Standing Committee on the draft Asian Development Bank (Seventh Replenishment of the Asian Development Fund) Order 2001. I think that Cambodia was very much in his mind and I am delighted that these matters are now being addressed.
I am also delighted about the genuine inclusiveness in the Department for International Development. That inclusiveness is seen in its work with NGOs and charitable organisations, which is to the advantage of both. The organisations include Oxfam, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, Christian Aid, War on Want and many more. We have gained from such pluralism as we approach international affairs in the way that the White Paper sets out.
For example, I am grateful to CAFOD for the information that it has given us on Peru. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will bring us up to date on that later. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State replied to a written question that I tabled a week or so ago. Less than a year ago, there was no democracy in Peru and the election was rigged, so it is encouraging to hear from CAFOD that the Minister for Women's Affairs in Peru, Susana Villaran, has set up a truth commission and that her Ministry is assessing the plight of about 600,000 people who were displaced by political violence.
We want to address such matters and we want the international community to be involved in seeking a solution. That dialogue will continue.
I welcome the fact that the Government—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly referred to this today—are committed to an aid budget that will increase by 45 per cent. in real terms between 1997 and 2003–04, and have refocused all the UK's development effort on the reduction of extreme poverty. I am glad that my right hon. Friend constantly underlines that challenge to extreme poverty wherever we find it in whatever part of the world.
We have led the world in dealing with the dreadful problem of debt repayment and its implications for the poorest people in the poorest countries. I do not talk with any sense of complacency, because I know that that view would not be shared by those on the Front Bench.

However well we happen to be doing, organisations such as Oxfam continue to remind us of the challenges that lie ahead.
For example, Oxfam, in a parliamentary briefing, states:
Of the twenty-two countries receiving debt relief under the HIPC initiative, three-quarters will be spending over ten per cent of government revenue on debt this year, leaching vital resources away from poverty reduction efforts. Sixteen countries will still be spending more on debt than on health care. Ten countries will be spending more on debt than on primary education and health combined. Zambia is a case in point—this year the Zambian government will spend a quarter of its national budget on debt, more than its entire spending on health. This in a country where one out of five children will not live to see their 5th birthday, and where the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis has reduced life expectancy to 40 years.
Oxfam makes a relevant point.

Clare Short: Of the 22 countries receiving debt relief under the HIPC initiative, which is designed to remove the overhang of debt so that they can borrow and trade sensibly and use aid and their own revenues for other purposes, all, on average, spend less than 11 per cent. of their revenue on debt relief—that is lower than the rest of the developing countries. If we focus only on the heavily indebted poor countries and on debt, we start distorting need. In the case of Zambia, President Chiluba is talking about breaching or changing the constitution, going for a third term and ripping up the agreed economic reform programme that brought debt relief to Zambia. That is the threat to Zambia—bad governance. We must go on with the debt relief programme, but the obsession with having more and more debt relief for a small number of countries is getting a bit out of proportion.

Mr. Clarke: I am delighted by my right hon. Friend's response, and the House and Oxfam will take on board the important points that she has made. However, I hope that she will forgive me for quoting from another parliamentary briefing from Oxfam on the related but equally important subject of global education. It states:
Today 125 million children are not enrolled in school; two thirds of these children are girls … We are witnessing a global crisis—children throughout the world are being denied their fundamental right to education … In developing countries, one in four adults—some 900 million people—are illiterate, 64 per cent. of them are women.
My right hon. Friend has seen that as a huge challenge, particularly remembering the role of women; women seeking emancipation, and rightly so—the poorest people in the poorest countries. The Government's response is progressive.
The hon. Member for South-West Devon referred to institutions such as the EU, the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations and its agencies. It may be that I and many others share some of his criticisms, but the main thrust of such international organisations, including the EU, cannot be changed by giving the impression that we are half in and half out. In such a situation, nobody takes us seriously. We made a grave mistake in leaving UNESCO, for all its faults. I am glad that we are back. We should be in there fighting—in the EU, in the UN, and playing our part in seeking the transparency and improvement in the World Bank, the IMF and elsewhere, as the White Paper tells us. That is the way to achieve our objectives, not self-imposed isolationism, for which the hon. Gentleman seemed to argue.
International development is a wonderful subject, but there are difficulties, some of which I have seen for myself, as have other hon. Members. It was no great pleasure to stand by Lake Victoria and see bodies floating down from the terrible carnage in Rwanda, and to see how the locals had to deal with mass graves and the pollution of their rivers and their fish, upon which they were almost exclusively dependent for their food supply. That is the negative side of our work. That was sad and something that we wanted to erase, and it is right that we should continue to seek to do so.
I want to end on a more positive note by remembering two countries where tremendous progress has been made. The first is northern Iraq. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) has not been given the credit that he deserves for setting up the safe havens. Having visited Iraq in the early stages and then again about 18 months ago, I could see the transformation in that country, much of it due to the UN, which is extremely commendable. It is a remarkable and welcome change.
But for me, in this Parliament, and perhaps in the previous one, my greatest memory was of visiting South Africa in the week when we saw almost a miracle—the democratic election of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid and oppression, the progress for which we are all now striving. With that came the message that, if Mandela can spend 27 years in prison, as he did, and yet come out with such huge optimism, as we in Britain saw this week, what we see in the White Paper is inspiring to us all and I warmly and genuinely congratulate my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Bowen Wells: I should warn the House about the mutual admiration society that we seem to be creating this afternoon. Despite that, I still want to say how grateful I am for the kind remarks made about me by the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter).
However, I am not alone on the International Development Committee. We have a superb Committee, whose members are dedicated and work extremely hard. We have produced more reports than most Select Committees, all of which have provoked enormous interest. I should like to extend the kind remarks that have been made to the members of the Committee, including the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), who played a remarkable part in the first two years of that Committee. The Committee has supported and helped DFID's effort to build consensus and to make this the important subject that it is.
The Secretary of State's energy and conviction have undoubtedly driven, led and inspired the Department for International Development and others. Discussions on pro-poor policies and achieving international targets have taken root in all international organisations, although some are not as good as others. We recently discussed regional development banks. The Asian Development bank will focus on and operate a pro-poor programme, which will totally change the way in which it has operated since its foundation. The Secretary of State has encouraged that sort of achievement and vision, and we should congratulate her on the globalisation White Paper, which is the second such document that the Department has produced since she took up her post.
The globalisation White Paper encompasses almost all the subjects that the Select Committee on International Development has confronted. One of our early papers was on conflict. We all agree that conflict drives back development, and it is important to find ways in which to reduce it, especially in places where it is rampant, such as sub-Saharan Africa.
Another important report covered women and development. We cannot begin to tackle the problems of the poorest of the poor until we empower women to take charge of their lives, their children and families. Currently, 70 per cent. of those in abject poverty cannot do that. That is only the tip of the iceberg. Many others who are very poor are not in a position to take control of their lives or begin to contribute to their escape or that of their countries from abject poverty.
I want to complain to the business managers about the lack of opportunity for debate on the Floor of the House. The first White Paper that the Department produced was never debated or the subject of a statement.

Clare Short: It was the subject of a statement.

Mr. Wells: Yes, but not of a debate. That was disgraceful. As the Select Committee report on globalisation requests, business managers should provide for a debate on international development at least once every Parliament. I believe that we should debate it more often. After all, the Department's budget is set to increase every year and it will soon spend more than £3 billion. If the Secretary of State continues her success in getting money from the Treasury, the Department will have an even bigger budget. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has attended our Committee proceedings more than once to discuss debt, which the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) mentioned, and I know that he is also dedicated to tackling the problems of abject poverty not only through debt relief but in other ways.
The expansion of the budget should be seriously debated. We do not have to worry about the press. I am sure that all hon. Members will have noticed that no members of the press are here because we do not intend to have an argument, slag each other off and make their news. I am grateful for that, but it does not make the debate less important. Indeed, it probably makes it more important.

Mrs. Gillan: Opposition Front-Bench Members have strongly supported the Secretary of State's efforts to secure an annual debate. Today, the International Criminal Court Bill is being considered in Committee. I was supposed to attend the proceedings and several hon. Members, who take a specific interest in international matters, are serving on the Committee and cannot be in the Chamber. That applies not least to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King), who interviewed earlier. Surely it is not outwith the wit of man or the usual channels to timetable our business so that those who take a special interest in international development can be in the Chamber.

Mr. Wells: I agree with my hon. Friend. Select Committee members often serve on Standing Committees.


Those hon. Members should be spared their duties on Standing Committees, including the Committee that is considering the International Criminal Court Bill, and given time to attend the debate.
The approach of The Economist to globalisation has infuriated the Secretary of State. It claims that she has abandoned her convictions and ideals by wholeheartedly adopting the liberal free trade ideas of the past. Such commentators miss the point. The Secretary of State constantly says that we need growth and extra money to tackle poverty. I agree with her. Contrary to the old liberal theories on free trade, she and I believe that the process must be managed. As she constantly says, there is nothing automatic about growth leading to the diminution of abject poverty in any country. It has to be managed and the goal of diminishing poverty must be wholeheartedly pursued if we are not to find that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and we make no progress on expanding the wealth of countries, and introducing good governance, democracy, the rule of law, a sound civil service, an independent judiciary and a free press.
That is the difference between the globalisation White Paper and old-style liberal economics. The Economist is almost always profoundly wrong about everything. If The Economist claims that something will happen, almost invariably it will not. If hon. Members want to know what will not happen, they should read The Economist. The Secretary of State was right to take it to task for accusing her of being a Whig, an old liberal in the 19th century sense. The Secretary of State is trying to create the right conditions for growth. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon also wants to do that.
In 1996, sub-Saharan Africa earned six times more from exports than from overseas development assistance. Exports, trade, the expansion of agriculture, surpluses and markets to which surpluses from rural areas can be transported over good roads will lead to growth, education, health for women and children and thus bring under control the serious problems that population increases will cause. In 25 years, there will be 8 billion people in the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a world population of 1 billion; we are now contemplating a population of 8 billion. The idea of doing nothing, sitting still and not searching for methods to create economic growth is not sustainable. The population in developing countries will increase by 97 per cent. in the next 25 years. If we are not careful, abject poverty will increase, not decrease.
As a result of HIV-AIDS—on which the Committee produced a report—life expectancy is being driven back in some countries. Life expectancy had grown from 46 years, on average, to 64 in 20 years. It is now being driven back. As we discussed with the Under-Secretary of State in Westminster Hall, we will be driving back 30 years of development in Africa if we do not help the African countries to manage HIV-AIDS. We cannot ignore that important issue.
However, let us not get too depressed. In a publication, the World Bank—commenting on international development targets—says:
The Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Morocco belong to a select group of countries that halved the proportion of their people living in poverty in less than a generation. So did the Indian states of Haryana, Kerala and Punjab. Another dozen countries—including Botswana and Mauritius—reduced the proportion by a quarter in a

generation. Other countries can learn much from the well-documented lessons of this experience, for if it has been done, it can be done again.
Empowering poor people is the starting point—providing opportunities for women, opening political space for poor people to organise. Democratisation has to go beyond simple rule by the majority to include minorities.
The task to which the globalisation White Paper is putting our shoulders can be achieved. We are not pursuing a lost cause. We must strengthen our determination that we are going to achieve our targets.
We are not doing as well as we should at the moment. The publication to which I referred mentions the target of reducing abject poverty by half by 2015, and suggests that we are running below the target level that we should be achieving at the moment.

Clare Short: We are on track for the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, but we are below the target on maternal mortality and some of the others. The trouble with the target is that it is an average across the world and Asia is doing a lot better than Africa. I agree that people who see the sad images care but feel very depressed. They should know that we have had a lot of success and that if we could universalise that success, we could make progress. We are on track for the target of halving the proportion of people in poverty; it is achievable, but we have to do better in the countries that are missing out.

Mr. Wells: That is a perfectly good correction. We are below the target in Africa but we are beyond it in some Asian and Latin American countries; although, as has been pointed out, the inequality of the distribution of the increased growth in Latin America is causing difficulty.
In the original White Paper and the globalisation White Paper, it has been acknowledged that the private sector will have to drive the programme. We must encourage that but, in 1996, £11.3 billion was invested in developing countries by the private sector in this country. In 1999, that fell to £3.8 billion. There is a serious problem, although I accept that that is related to the Asian crisis. We must resume that level of investment by the private sector; not just to the seven or so fastest-developing countries, but to the least-attractive countries. That is important if we are to achieve anything like the targets that we have set ourselves. Those figures need to be investigated.
I attended a conference at the Foreign Office yesterday for British Trade Partners for Africa. I was alarmed that DFID was not mentioned at all by British Trade Partners, in spite of the fact that more than £1 billion of the DFID budget is planned to be spent on Africa in the next year. DFID's work in Africa is vital to exports from Africa to this country and from us to Africa. When will the Foreign Office stop being jealous of DFID and start co-operating? When will the DTI recognise that trade is a part of DFID's responsibility—as is recognised by the Secretary of State for International Development—and must be integrated in the effort to increase trade and investment into the poorer countries? We could do that.
In many African countries, the infrastructure is not as it would be in more developed countries. Often, there is no clean or reliable water supply, and no adequate telephone system. Roads may be very bad and everything that can be expected in a developed country in which we


invest is not there in a developing country. If through grants and assistance from DFID, infrastructure problems were addressed—including health, education and housing needs—and that was followed by private sector investment, we would make a greater contribution than by simply giving ODA.
I ask the Foreign Office and the DTI to work properly with DFID. We would then all gain hugely, because we would be creating wealth in developing countries and we would have a competitive British industry. I am so glad that untying has taken place, but we have to get that to take place in other competitive countries. None the less, the British should be able to get the lion's share of the DFID expenditure, simply because they are the best people to do the work at the lowest possible price, with the best possible quality.
The agreement to introduce a longer period of tariff-free access to the European Community will enable the management of change to take place. Change has to take place, but in introducing tariff reductions and championing free trade we must not be seen to be threatening.
In the example of the Caribbean, some trading arrangements have existed for more than 400 years. These people are our friends and they are part of the fabric of the British nation. A demand that they must change their entire economy in a brief period—forget producing bananas, rice and sugar—would have represented a problem and they would have needed time to tackle it, but wisdom has prevailed and what has been agreed is probably fair.
I do not agree about bananas, however, because, under the arrangements being negotiated by the United States and the EU, there is no way that the east Caribbean banana trade will be able to continue. Why? Because producing the same quantity of bananas costs twice as much in the east Caribbean as it does in central America. There is no way in which we can overcome that, except through diversification.

Clare Short: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want the record to suggest that I have no concern for the future of the Caribbean. I agree that the Caribbean must be helped to adjust on sugar, rice and bananas, although I do not think that the longer adjustment period that has been agreed is necessary. However, I agree that an adjustment period is necessary.
For the eastern Caribbean, there is a niche in organic bananas, about which some of our supermarkets have made proposals, but encouraging the Caribbean to stay in products that it produces expensively, but which are available cheaply elsewhere in the world, will not help. In the end, it would get producers into trouble. They are good on education, however, and Barbados has figures as good as any in the rest of the world. It is a beautiful island that could achieve even more from tourism and value-added activities.
I share the hon. Gentleman's concern for the Caribbean and I agree that its countries are vulnerable because they are small. They need additional help and they need to phase in the adjustment. I do not believe that a longer period is necessary, but we have one and we are absolutely dedicated to supporting the Caribbean in the

transition. I am sure that there is a prosperous and comfortable future available for the Caribbean if the change that needs to be made is embraced and carried through.

Mr. Wells: I believe that that is the intention and I very much hope that change will take place. However, I note that Stabex payments are being made because of lack of banana production in the eastern Caribbean following price falls in the British market. They have helped, but the trouble is that they are paid to Governments. The Governments of the eastern Caribbean are using them not to modernise the banana industry, but for other purposes. It would be all right if they used the payments for diversification in the economy, but I am afraid that they are not, nor are they putting them into education, where standards have been falling. Health standards, too, have been falling.
Banana farmers are not rich and the payments are being absorbed by other Government expenditure. A lot more work and management has to be done in the Caribbean if we are to enable them to maintain their current standards of living, which are not luxurious. I cannot afford the prices of the hotels on the west coast of Barbados and the Barbadian community as a whole, unless supported by Government money, could not afford to buy even a gin and tonic in the new Sandy Lane. That is not the issue, however, and we are concerned with the general standard of living in those islands. It is important that we bear that in mind.

Dr. Tonge: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those problems still exist in the Caribbean and that, with the Americans determined to pursue Plan Colombia, there is a great danger that Caribbean farmers will turn to coca as an alternative crop?

Mr. Wells: Yes, but that is not merely a possibility. I could take the hon. Lady to areas around the volcano called Soufriere in St. Vincent where coca is being grown.

Dr. Tonge: Is that a promise?

Mr. Wells: Perhaps we can make an arrangement.
I could take the hon. Lady to that area or to Dominica, where I know coca is growing very well. It is a wonderful crop with few enemies, it has no diseases and there are no insects that eat it. Indeed, it grows so well that three crops a year can be produced, so it is a major temptation—the Secretary of State referred to that matter when discussing Colombia. There is a serious problem and our help, sympathy and support are necessary while people are making those adjustments, which, I agree, have to be made.
I want to discuss human migration, as $70 billion is generated by those who have left the countries in which they were born for countries such as the United Kingdom. From those countries, they send money back to their own countries to help to maintain the families from which they came. That is a huge sum and, in some countries, such money represents the largest single source of income. I welcome that, but the question of human migration will dominate such discussions for the next 100 years.
The trouble is that we attract some of the most skilled people from those countries. There is a bar on the national health service recruiting doctors from those countries to


help us through the NHS crisis. However, although the Government are debarred from such activities, the private sector agencies are recruiting nurses from South Africa, a country that can ill afford to lose them, having trained them and spent money on them. Yet those nurses are now coming to work here, which I think is immoral and quite wrong. If anything, we should be lending our skilled people to deal with HIV-AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases prevalent among the poverty-stricken people of South Africa.
Economic migrants come to this country, and we are having difficulty processing them once they claim political asylum. They are fleeing terrible regimes and countries that hold out no economic hope for them or their children. They should not be described I as inferior people or as criminals who are breaking the law. They should be treated with great courtesy, as is the tradition in this country in welcoming people from overseas. If they are breaking the laws on immigration, their cases should be treated seriously; they should quickly be examined and then asked to go back to the country from which they came. We cannot take the numbers that are coming here, and they are breaking the immigration laws that have been agreed.
However, we cannot send those people back to those countries unless we make an effort to develop those countries in the way in which the globalisation White Paper suggests and demands. When we explain why they have to go back, we should also explain what opportunities the British and the international community will offer them for a better life in their own country. That is the human and sensible way to deal with the people who come here—who are among the most skilled, energetic and innovative people—to the discomfiture of our immigration service and our Customs and Excise service.
That discomfiture is irrelevant, however. Those people are human beings just as we are, and they are seeking to achieve a better life. We would do the same if we were in their position, and they should be treated with dignity and courtesy. None the less, they should not be admitted unless there are genuine political asylum reasons. It is a disgrace that we have let our immigration system get into such an appallingly incompetent state.
On corruption, the International Development Committee has produced a report worthy of serious study not only by the Government—who will undoubtedly have to introduce a Bill to enable us to comply with the OECD legislation to make it a criminal offence to seek to bribe foreign public officials—but by the civil service. The civil service will have to be organised in several Departments, including the Home Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Foreign Office and the Lord Chancellor's Department. There are 14 such organisations dealing with this problem spread across government, including the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority.
The Government must put that matter in order, but we must also address the fact that London is one of the major money-laundering centres of the world. We must get our banks, lawyers and accountants to stop laundering money from overseas. They must also stop harbouring money stolen from third-world countries and enabling it to come here to be cleansed so that it can be used by families and relatives elsewhere in the world.
That is what we have to do, but the countries in which we are investing must also clean up their act. We can make a major contribution by not giving them a means of disposing of the money. This must be an international effort. If we close our doors, it is possible that the money will go to Switzerland, Frankfurt, New York or elsewhere. We must ensure that there are international agreements, which will stop some of the corruption in the countries with which we are dealing. If they continue to be corrupt, private development and private investment will not take place.
When the International Development Committee held a seminar for business men, we asked them what inhibited them from investing in some of the world's poorest countries. The main problem turned out to be corruption. Corruption is an important issue, which we must address as soon as possible in the next Parliament. We must drive out corruption, or at least drive down the level of corruption to which we contribute, and which inhibits the private-sector investment that is so badly needed.
The White Paper—14,000 copies have been sold, and the Secretary of State gave figures relating to translations and the website—has aroused debate and interest throughout the world. That is a tribute to the Secretary of State's work, and that of the Select Committee, in leading discussions in the international-development world in Europe and elsewhere. I am thinking of the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations development programme, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all which bodies the Committee has visited during the current Parliament.
The White Paper is a major contribution to discussion on this issue. I trust that it will produce a consensus that will drive the current programme towards maximum success.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Several hon. Members clearly wish to speak. If speeches are brief, more may succeed in catching my eye.

Mr. Mohammad Sarwar: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on publishing her Department's second White Paper. It is not simply a wish list of noble aims; it constitutes a practical approach to lifting millions out of poverty. I am proud that our Government are setting realistic targets, and leading the push for positive change. If the ambition is to be realised, it will take many years but decisions made now and in the coming months will help to shape a better future for people in developing countries.
It was encouraging to note the consensus among Opposition Members, and their support for the White Paper. I confess, however, that the vast majority of my constituents are hostile to the idea of accepting anything that is said by the Conservative party.
I have a special interest in the debate. Having been born and brought up in Pakistan, I understand the importance of investment in health and education for developing countries. Moreover, I represent the Scottish constituency


with the highest ethnic minority population. The vast majority are from Pakistan and Kashmir, but many come from India and Bangladesh.
Interest is heightened when decisions made now will affect constituents with families on the other side of the world. Let us bear in mind the stark figures. A fifth of the global population live in abject poverty: that means that more than 1 billion people exist on the equivalent of less than $1 a day. We live in a world of growing material wealth, yet the outrage of abject poverty persists. Now we have a real chance to end poverty. It is our moral obligation, but it is also in our interest.
The biggest problems facing Scotland and the United Kingdom are fuelled by poverty. I am thinking particularly of the drugs trade, which breaks up families and communities and kills young people in Govan and other parts of Scotland and Britain.
The heroin trail starts in some of the poorest and most underdeveloped parts of Asia. It is very much in our national interest to make globalisation work for the world's poor. When Martin Luther King said around 40 years ago,
Before you finish your breakfast this morning, you will have depended on half the world",
we may have seen his point most clearly in our cereals, coffee, tea and fruit, but it has now taken on greater significance.
Greater movements of people, goods, services, capital and information are bringing every part of the world closer. With every passing day, we are increasingly dependent on people thousands of miles away in our modern world. Globalisation is powered by advances in technology, particularly e-mail and the internet. It is as fast and simple now for someone in Indonesia or Peru to contact me by e-mail as it is for my constituents in Ibrox and Pollokshaws. The costs of international transactions have been reduced and capital is much easier to move. The poorest developing countries must be part of that. We must not allow them to be left on the fringes of progress. Decisions by political leaders throughout the world now and in the immediate future can end poverty.
We must not underestimate the importance of good government. Globalisation will work for people in poverty only where their Governments are effective and responsive to their needs. Where there is conflict and corruption, the people who have the least will always suffer the most. I am pleased that the White Paper makes it clear that reducing world poverty is a goal for all in our Government—for all Departments.
At present, there are great disparities through globalisation. The far east has clearly benefited, while millions in Africa have yet to see any change. Thirty years ago, Korea was poorer than Ghana. Now it is richer than Portugal. Governments of poorer countries must create conditions that help the poorest in their communities to find work or a marketplace for goods that will keep their families. Developing countries must attract foreign investors who can conduct their business safely and with a reasonable return. If not, investment will quickly go elsewhere. That demands a stable legal system that punishes theft and bans bribery and corruption. By the same token, people's human rights and working conditions must he protected.
If a developing country has good government, it will have a better chance of growing economically. We must do everything that we can to encourage decent education and health care, fair law enforcement and proper financial management. It is noticeable that healthy democracies with a free media and open debate about government have the best chance of making globalisation work for the poor in their countries.
Those investing in basic infrastructure such as water and sanitation, electricity, transport and telecommunications have a key role in giving poor communities access to global markets. One of the biggest barriers to development is armed conflict and the threat of conflict. India and Pakistan invested vast sums of money developing nuclear capabilities while large sections of their populations lived in abject poverty. Conflict threatens investment, stability and security and hinders any chance of growth. I warmly welcome the White Paper's commitment to increasing international efforts to resolve conflict and regulate the arms trade.
The greatest disparities in wealth are caused by disparities in the availability of education to rich and poor. More than 110 million children of primary school age have never attended school. Moreover, 150 million other children have dropped out of school before attaining basic literacy and numeracy. Education is the quickest way out of poverty. Countries that invest in primary education develop much more quickly, and girls especially benefit from it. Women constitute two thirds of those living in extreme poverty, and I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for giving such priority to providing education and health care for women and girls in poverty.
Better-educated countries attract business investment because of their skilled and flexible work forces. Education makes globalisation work. Nevertheless, there is a danger of what the White Paper describes as a "digital divide". Only one in five people in the world have access to reliable telecommunications, fewer than half of people in Africa have ever used a telephone, and there are more computers in New York city than in the whole of Africa. Ever more international business is conducted by the fast global transfer of information. Such technologies must benefit traditional industries, as is beginning to happen with the development of internet marketing.
Investment in education must be coupled with affordable access to telecommunications. The introductory version of the White Paper provided a good example of how such arrangements can work. People in remote villages in Bangladesh can obtain a loan to purchase a mobile telephone, enabling them to establish a tiny call centre for community use.
Good health care also is needed to lift people out of poverty. More women will die in India during pregnancy this week than will die in Europe this year. Illness can ruin a whole family's livelihood. When one family member becomes sick, another family member often has to care for him or her. At such times, the family may need more money for medicine.
I welcome the decision to hold this debate during save the children week. Children are most at risk from sickness and disease, but they have to be healthy to get the most from any available education. We must act now to provide decent health care for the 600 million children around the world who live in poverty.
Globalisation should enable us to share medical knowledge and make a real difference to the health of the poor. At the most basic level, people must have clean water and sanitation. Every year, diarrhoea ends hundreds of thousands of lives although it could be treated with simple rehydration. However, globalisation also entails increased travel and the spread of more killer diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS; 16,000 new HIV infections every day decimate communities. Zambia lost 1,300 teachers to AIDS in less than one year.
International institutions are badly in need of reform. I congratulate our Ministers on leading the debate on poverty reduction and reaching agreement with bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, those bodies do not provide a strong, clear voice for developing countries. We must make bodies such as the World Trade Organisation fully involve the world's poorest countries and include them as part of an open and fair global economy. International trade rules must change and not simply serve the most powerful interests. The greatest growth in developing countries has consistently been achieved where exports have received the greatest promotion. Such promotion has been most clearly evident in the far east, where poverty has decreased most rapidly.
We must also ensure that the trade rules work for all countries. Britain's largest merchant shipbuilder is in my constituency but it has suffered at the hands of heavily subsidised overseas yards. Recently, Korea has taken the lion's share of world shipbuilding but its yards have undercut competition by building ships at a loss. We need the WTO to work fairly for all countries, including the United Kingdom.
The tide is not always against developing countries. ActionAid is among the many British groups campaigning to stop patents on food crops. This week, the United States patent office threw out 13 of 16 claims by the American company Ricetec seeking patents on basmati rice plants and grain. Farmers in India and Pakistan were appalled by the patents, and there was considerable lobbying and campaigning worldwide to have them struck off. International pressure may have paid off in this case, but crop patents are still a reality under WTO rules.
The world's poor must be heard on this issue through the WTO. I am not advocating flagrant disregard for intellectual property rights. In my constituency, there is an established firm of highly trained intellectual property attorneys, Murgitroyd and Company. I have seen the importance of its work, protecting and enforcing property rights over ideas and inventions. It could operate from anywhere in the world, but chooses to base itself in Glasgow. What I advocate is proper respect for intellectual property. The idea that an American company could claim a patent for basmati rice would be treated as a bad joke in the Punjab if it were not so serious. There is much to do before the WTO shakes off its image as a rich man's club.
There is also much to do to meet our global responsibilities towards the environment. The goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2010 received a major blow when President Bush decided against implementing the Kyoto agreement. I do not envy my right hon. and hon. Friends the job of trying to persuade the Governments of developing countries that we must all act to protect the environment while the United States disregards the agreement with impunity.

We must lend support to those in America who continue to press their President to take action to protect the world's environment and future.
The best chance of progress comes when people are organised in their demand for change. In Britain, that has been seen in the successful Jubilee 2000 campaign to end crippling debt, leading to substantial commitments to cut the burden on heavily indebted countries. Most recently, in my constituency, Queen's Park and Pollokshields church members have written to me expressing fears over ethnic conflict in Indonesia between Muslims and Christians driving more people into abject poverty.
There has also been a successful postcard campaign by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund calling for global trade to work in the interests of the poor. Hundreds of constituents have expressed their personal commitment to the issue, focusing the minds of Scottish Members on the White Paper. There is a broad alliance of Church and faith groups, charities and campaigning organisations, amounting to a huge 3 million people throughout Britain, demanding policies that will meet the target of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
There is also pressure to provide more funding for development, rising to 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product, and to allocate more of our aid to the lowest-income countries. I welcome the Labour Government's strong commitment to the issues outlined in the White Paper. While such a movement can influence Government policy in Britain, we see a need for similar action by civil society in developing countries. Their Governments are more likely to address the needs of the poor if their own people demand that they do so.
I welcome the assertion in the White Paper that globalisation can work for the world's poorest people. It is a great challenge for developing countries, and for our country, but we now have the framework for success and can look forward to ending abject poverty for millions.

Dr. Jenny Tonge: I warmly welcome this debate and thank the Department for International Development for its two very fine White Papers. In one sense, this debate is poorly timed, coming, as it does, at the end of the Parliament—we are all rather frustrated that it did not come earlier—but in another it is well timed, because the May day demonstration on Tuesday should have highlighted to the rest of the country and of the world what we in this Chamber are about. Unfortunately, the media seemed to be searching for a riot. Every time I turned on the television, the media were waiting for a riot to develop, but it never came.
I have a suggestion for the demonstrators and the police. We could save all the money and spend it on development causes if the demonstrators and the police would each nominate a small group. The two groups could then execute a modern morris dance in Trafalgar square, with wooden planks, instead of staves, and riot helmets. That would be a token demonstration of the protesters' point, because we all know that they have a valid one. It has not been said often enough this afternoon that globalisation is exploiting poor people and the environment, and trying to make us all the same the world over—all eating burgers, wielding mobile phones and drinking coke.
In an editorial, The Times mentioned a banner waved by the demonstrators that said, "Replace capitalism with something nice". I asked myself whether communism was


nice. It was tried, and it did not last because the people who lived under it did not think that it was nice. Is the primitive life style nice? The Victorians spoke of noble savages, living in their wonderful villages and engaging in subsistence farming to try to stay alive. My right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Paddy Ashdown) mentioned Gladstone's hill villages of Afghanistan in a debate last week. If anyone is interested in globalisation and needs inspiration, I refer them to my right hon. Friend's speech. I am only sorry that the official Opposition missed it, because it was an extraordinarily good speech—

Mrs. Gillan: I was there.

Dr. Tonge: Apart from two Front Benchers, the Conservatives missed it totally.

Mr. Leigh: The hon. Lady's colleagues are missing her speech.

Dr. Tonge: It has been handed round to them. I have visited villages in India and Bangladesh and across sub-Saharan Africa. In southern Sudan, people want peace more than anything, but they do not see their previous life style of crop growing and cattle grazing as especially nice. It was grinding slavery just to keep alive. In all the places I have mentioned, globalisation of communication has occurred; people know now what our capitalist life style is like, and they think it is much nicer than theirs. The villagers of India and Bangladesh want their fridges and cars. The people of southern Sudan would accept decent housing and a few roads for a start. To them, capitalism looks nice, and they do not want it replaced by anything else until they have sampled it.
I have tried to point out to people terrible working conditions, including the use of child and slave labour, filth and disease in the workplace, and the destruction of the environment by mineral extraction and the cutting down of forests, but they ask me, "Who are you to criticise us? Sorry, British people, but your country became rich in the 19th century on the backs of the poor at home and abroad."
I originally hale from the black country and if I had enough time I would read out passages from J. B. Priestley's "English Journey", which describes that area, just before our lifetimes, as a hell hole.

Mr. Dennis Turner: Read it!

Dr. Tonge: With that encouragement, I will. Priestley said:
There was the Black Country unrolled before you like a smouldering carpet. You looked into a hollow of smoke and blurred buildings and factory chimneys. There seemed to be no end to it.
He added:
I could easily believe that there were no people down there.
He spoke of the area's
iron face lit with hell fire.

I remember from my childhood the hell fire of the blast furnaces when they opened at night. Priestley wrote of yards
filled with rusted metal and great patches of waste ground, shocking as raw sores and open wounds.
That is very familiar to me. We did that here, so who are we to criticise people abroad who want to get rich?
The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) accused Tuesday's demonstrators of mindless chanting, but they are right to be worried about globalisation and the activities of the multinationals. Those activities often benefit people in this country, and a few people in the developing countries who are already rich, but no benefit accrues to the poor in those countries.
The multinationals, of course, disagree. They produce wonderful, glossy brochures extolling their own virtues. They say that they would not dream of disobeying OECD guidelines on the environment and labour standards. However, NGOs and representatives from countries all over the developing world frequently tell me stories of exploitation and destruction allegedly carried out by British companies.
Sometimes it is worth naming names, and this debate is one such occasion. I shall use the word "allegedly", even though I am in the House of Commons. Weir Pumps and Rolls-Royce are accused of contributing indirectly to the terrible civil war in southern Sudan, where people were killed, abducted, enslaved and murdered. BP is claimed to have been involved with paramilitary organisations to protect its oil interests in Colombia. Shell's involvement in Nigeria is legendary, as is Nestlé's promotion of baby formula in Africa and India.
Chocolate manufacturers everywhere—Cadbury, Nestlé, and Thornton—are alleged to have used child slave labour. Rio Tinto's exploits in south-east Asia offer numerous examples of bad practice. Other stories circulate about Balfour Beatty's involvement in the Ilisu dam project. Supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury's are alleged to use third-world countries to grow foods and flowers for the western market.
The list goes on, but I stress that these are allegations. The multinationals tell a different story. I have mentioned their brochures, which describe their aims and their missions to educate and treat the sick as part of their projects. Members of the Select Committee on International Development have seen those projects. I recall the model clothes factory in Bangladesh making clothes for Gap. In that factory, the Department for International Development was providing health care for the women. We were troubled about that at the time, but good practice does exist.
I am sure that the Select Committee was shown the best examples, but hon. Members are not easily fooled and we know that that was not the whole truth, unfortunately. Local managers in developing countries cut costs to attract more multinational investment, and they will do so by exploiting people and the environment. Because OECD guidelines and WTO regulations are not legally binding, the multinationals will continue to turn a blind eye for the sake of profits for their shareholders.

Clare Short: I am not saying that there are not some multinationals that exploit, especially in the mining and extraction sector, but the standard of jobs offered by multinationals in agricultural sourcing and textile


production, for instance, in developing countries across the world is greater than what is otherwise available in those countries. We want improvement, but those people need investment. A million young women in Dhaka work in the textile industry who previously lived in rural areas and had no income. It must not be suggested that such investments do not bring benefits, because they do.

Dr. Tonge: The Secretary of State must not think that I am condemning all multinational companies, but NGOs and others constantly report examples of multinationals not following good practice, and of people being exploited.
I remember a wonderful film on television called "Mangetout"—everyone must have seen it. People in Zimbabwe—or perhaps it was Tanzania—went up and down the mangetout plantations singing something like, "Up the hillsides, down the valleys, Tesco is our greatest friend." They sang that little song as they picked the mangetouts. They were happy and well cared for; it was a good project. I am not suggesting that all is bad.
What can we do about the deficiencies that used to exist in our country and now exist in other parts of the world in the name of economic growth? How effective are we in our own policies? As the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) asked, how joined-up is our policy? We have no criticism of the Department for International Development. It has made tremendous strides and produced two White Papers. There have been other positive steps such as the cross-departmental initiative to combat conflict in Africa. That is excellent stuff. The export credit guarantee review is being carried out, and efforts on debt relief are being made with the co-operation of the Chancellor. Again, that is all wonderful stuff. A draft export controls Bill will be introduced in the next Parliament. I welcome greatly the pre-Budget support for the vaccines for TB, malaria and AIDS. However, the co-operation of other Departments, which is so essential, seems to be lacking.
The Department for International Development did not sign the annual report on human rights this year, having done so for the past two years. It is not a permanent member of the Cabinet Committee on Defence and Overseas Policy. I think that it should be—after all, as DFID cleans up all the mess, the Secretary of State should be a member of that Cabinet Committee.

Clare Short: I think that the hon. Lady was a member of the Select Committee when that recommendation was made. Since the conflict in Africa cross-departmental review was set up, which I chair, I am now a full member of that Committee. That is not so important for me, because I used to attend; it is more important that the Department is recognised.

Dr. Tonge: That is excellent news. However, I note that the Secretary of State still does not sign the annual report on strategic arms exports, which is a significant factor in poverty in the developing world.
The Department for International Development supports ethical trading and ethical foreign policy, but I sometimes wonder whether the Department of Trade and Industry does. We certainly worry about whether the Foreign Office does any longer. There was confusion a few weeks ago about arms to Morocco. The Foreign

Office said in a written answer that it had not supported the arms going to Morocco, but that the DTI decided such matters. So the buck was passed to the DTI. We need more joined-up Government, even though progress has been made. We certainly need more progress on the aid budget and on alleviating debt.
Incidentally, I think that development will be set back hugely if the Government support the United States on national missile defence. The world could not sustain another arms race; it would be anti-development.
The WTO is, in theory, one of the most democratic global institutions, and it must be made to work. However, it is in need of reform. A significant co-ordinated effort is needed to ensure that developing countries establish the administrative capacity to be able to participate in WTO proceedings. I understand that 38 of the world's poorest countries are unable to send representatives to the 50 or so meetings held in Geneva. If we are to encourage good governance and good world trade, it is important that they should be encouraged to attend those meetings and given the expertise that they require. WTO dispute settlement proceedings must be made more transparent and must be resolved more quickly. I think that the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford would agree with that.
That surely means that the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF must somehow be brought under the umbrella of the United Nations. There must be world regulation of those things. It can work; it has already happened—for instance, global certification for conflict diamonds is under discussion and is being agreed by 159 countries. That is surely proof that such worldwide systems are possible. We must work towards them.
I shall not say much about HIV/AIDS—as hon. Members know, in my view, that is probably the biggest problem facing the world at present. If we do not do more about HIV/AIDS, it will stop development—it will engulf the world. It is not a problem only for developing countries, but for all of us.
As I said in a debate on HIV/AIDS held at the beginning of this week, among the earliest examples of globalisation were the Christian and Catholic Churches. If only the Vatican would promote the use of condoms in developing countries—really go for it, make it public and produce a big statement on the subject—that would help so much in what is really the only defence of the developing world against HIV/AIDS at present. I hasten to add that that would be a pro-life measure, not anti-life. I hope that the Special Assembly of the United Nations in June will command the attention of the world's media. It must do so, because as I said, this is a global emergency.
In conclusion, we need global monitoring and global legislation to tackle globalisation so that it will be a force for good for all the people in the world. Without concerted international and domestic cross-departmental action, without moving from declaration to implementation and tackling those problems, the 2015 development targets and the noble aims of DFID will be irrelevant.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker(Mr. Michael Lord): Order. Before I call the next speaker, I point out to the House that several right hon. and hon. Members are trying to


catch my eye and that, unless contributions are considerably shorter, a number of them will be disappointed.

Mr. Tony Worthington: Out of respect for my colleagues on both sides of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall attempt to follow your advice and cut my remarks short.
The globalisation White Paper just about gets it right: as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development says—rather than in the words attributed to her—she is not pro-globalisation, but pro managed globalisation that serves the needs of the poorest people in the world. We have resources that must be used for the poor.
My right hon. Friend and I agree, above all, that that means getting our ideas right. We have to conceptualise the problems in the right way. I have four brief examples of that. The first relates to the way in which we think about HIV/AIDS. A recent judgment in the Pretoria high court was greeted with triumph; it was seen as a wonderful achievement—as indeed it was. However, in a sense, that triumph was one for the drug companies, because it means that we think about HIV/AIDS almost exclusively in terms of finding drugs for it. That is wrong.
No matter how cheap those drugs are in South Africa, only a tiny number of people will benefit from them. What matters is that we stop AIDS and prevent people from catching it—not that we manage death better, but that we keep people alive by stopping them catching that appalling disease.
When I looked into the subject, my immediate thought was that the drugs companies would make more money from managing death than from saving life through anti-retrovirals. There would be less money to be made from a vaccine and even less from microbicides. The World Bank estimates that $2 billion is being spent annually, world wide, on treatment research, for example, on anti-retrovirals—primarily by the private sector. It is estimated that the total research on a vaccine was not $2 billion, but $300 million, and private research accounted for less than half that sum. Public money is being spent on a vaccine, but only a little bit of private money. In 1999, the sum spent on microbicides to protect women was about $35 million, of which $3 million came from the private sector.
We have a very clear picture and if those figures are correct, the private sector spends $7 or $8 on managing the disease for every $1 it invests in research on finding a cure or preventing it. Virtually nothing is spent on microbicides to protect women who are reliant on men. That is not a sensible policy. The challenge for us is to find out how to structure the fight against AIDS—where to spend the money and on which basic services—but we must somehow get the research right.
Another way to structure ideas is in terms of manpower and the mobility of labour. As the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) has suggested, we tend to think of ourselves as a given in such matters. We use the language of aid, but I think that we should ban the word "aid"; it is damaging because it implies that we are the good guys. I suspect that an audit of whether we gain

from the developing world or give to it in terms of labour would show that we are the gainers—certainly the United States is. It is unbelievable that a country such as India, which has to struggle to find resources to train its doctors, IT workers and scientists, finds that it has used its own scarce resources to help the United States, and we must audit those exchanges.
We must consider another inhibitor of development. When we studied corruption, I started by thinking that it was about good governance in the developing world and that the developing countries were exploiting the poor with their appalling practices. They are, but by the end of that piece of work, I became convinced that the problem lies here.
Let me cite some unfair figures. According to last year's annual report, we put about £14.9 million of bilateral aid into Nigeria. However, the Nigerian Government are trying to trace £4 billion that the Abacha regime took out of Nigeria and invested in the western world. So for every £1 that we put into Nigeria, one Nigerian family took out £200 and invested it in the west, and it is not the only family in Nigeria and that happens not just in Nigeria.
Let us consider what has happened in Russia. We used to have know-how funds for Russia—perhaps we still have them—but I think that those funds should come this way because enormous rackets have been involved in placing Russian money in this and other countries. If we are to promote development, we must be a bit sharper than the Home Office, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury in closing down money laundering in this country and elsewhere. That would be in our own good and in everyone else's.
Next, I turn to the way in which we consider trade. I am amazed when people demonstrate against the World Trade Organisation. It is amazing that one of the few agencies for bringing trade under control should become a bogey figure. We have to consider multinationals such as Cargill. People in this Chamber have never heard of it, yet it is the world's largest agricultural company and private firm. It has huge control over every stage of food production: from the supply of seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides right through the food chain to shipping and transportation. Its interest is not in ending poverty. When it offers miracle seeds to the developing world, it is interested in making profits and dominating the market. If, as a consequence of that, it reduces poverty, that is a useful by-product. However, its by-product is more likely to be depleted land, which is likely to be dependent on Cargill fertilisers and pesticides, the elimination of small, self-sufficient farmers and the destruction of the biodiversity of the area. That must be stopped on behalf of the poorer people of the world. We should work with the poorer countries in the WTO to bring democratic control to the world's marketplaces, not campaign on the streets against one of the only mechanisms that we have for controlling multinationals.
I have tried in my speech to say how futile it is to protest against globalisation. People are right to say that this is an area of major concern. I have tried briefly to look at four areas: AIDS, the mobility of labour, money laundering and trade. It is important for the Secretary of State and all of us who remain here to get our questions right about how we manage globalisation. If we accept the questions as they represented to us, we are in danger of intensifying rather than curing poverty.
The Secretary of State is right to point out the impact that her globalisation White Paper is having throughout the world. DFID has been useful in getting a focus in this place for crucial ideas on subjects such as AIDS, corruption and trade. We have not had such a focus here before. The existence of DFID has enabled us to do that.

Mr. Andrew Rowe: I start from the Christian position, which is that every human being is of equal value in God's eyes. We do not always live as if we believe that, but it is the Christian position and it drives us to have a responsibility for those less fortunate than ourselves. That responsibility carries a cost. In my view, the developed nations of the world have been playing at helping the poor of the world. Their bottom line is: how cheaply can we do this job? Can we invest a small enough percentage of our wealth so that our electors will not notice?
Let me give the House some figures. If someone in the United Kingdom earns the minimum wage, which from next October is to be set at £4.10 an hour, and works a 35-hour week for 48 weeks, he or she will earn £6,888. That is little enough. Goodness knows, I could not live on it. The present percentage spent on development is 0.3 per cent., which is just under £21. More important, 0.3 per cent. of a Member of Parliament's pay of almost £51,000 per annum is £150. I have no idea how my colleagues spend their money, but when I look at the price of a restaurant meal or an opera ticket, it makes me realise how small a proportion of the UK's national income we are prepared to devote to the poor of the world. We can and should do more. We should engage our population in the debate and stop pretending that we can look generous without cost to ourselves.
Secondly, we need to practise what we preach about empowering the poor. In Government agencies and NGOs there remains a culture of patronising the less well educated and the poor, and it is time that that stopped. Part of the problem stems from the understandable desire among aid agencies to protect their own way of life, their career prospects and sense of self-esteem, but few attitudes do more to perpetuate a culture of dependency or to fuel a sense of helpless envy and resentment.
Let me tell the House a true story. I know a black African who has considerable experience of development work in a number of different settings. He tells me that he was once asked to go to Ethiopia as a consultant. At meetings with white-led NGOs, he was treated with patronising condescension. As he said, that treatment would have been inexcusable if he had been, as they assumed, one of the Ethiopians whom the project was designed to help, but as he was a professional consultant, it was even less tolerable.
The Secretary of State has on many occasions made welcome and trenchant remarks about the contrast in overseas projects between the glossy new Land Rovers that are deemed to be indispensable to the aid workers and the inability to provide the local health workers with the bicycles that would allow them to be more effective. I sometimes think that too much development assistance is like that. A much greater proportion of our assistance budget should be ploughed into enabling local people to find the resources to enable them to take the skills that they have learned to other parts of their own country,

and successful projects in one country should share their experience with other countries. Too little use is still made of the information revolution, and too much of the travelling to spread good practice in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, is undertaken by white professionals.
One of the advantages of globalisation should be that it makes it much easier for development to be taken forward on the basis of south-to-south information exchange. I also look forward to much greater use being made in this country, where community development is mostly at a very primitive stage of evolution, of consultants from Africa, South America or other parts of the globe where community development has been carried to a much more sophisticated level. That implies, of course, that in coming years the huge development industry that has grown up since the end of the second world war will become increasingly controlled by organisations in the developing countries themselves and that the expatriate industry will shrink. That change will not be welcome to the international NGOs, which will resist it, however much their rhetoric claims the reverse.
That brings me to the-issue that I raised in Westminster Hall earlier this year: the accountability of NGOs. I am glad that some of the bigger international NGOs are addressing that matter in a joint working group and I look forward to seeing the results of their endeavours. However, the fact remains that international development is an arena in which public compassion can be manipulated to secure funding for organisations whose agendas may be idiosyncratic and whose standards of work may be below what should be acceptable. If NGOs are to continue to play such a key role in the global development strategy, they need to subscribe to a code of conduct and to inspection.
In passing, it is worth noting that one possible benefit of globalisation could be that it makes the pooling of expertise and resources across some of the great international organisations such as the Christian Church easier to achieve. I understand that the budget of the worldwide Christian Church is three times as great as that of the United Nations Children's Fund, but, in terms both of standards and global reach, its contribution does not match that huge potential. Globalisation could help to change that.

Mr. Streeter: Before my hon. Friend moves on from that point, will he confirm that although rationalisation, mergers, acquisitions and pooling of resources have occurred in almost every other sector, they rarely—if ever—happen in the NGO community? Will he say a word about that?

Mr. Rowe: I could not agree more, but I think that the establishment of competitive organisations that must risk public compassion fatigue in order to obtain funds is a mistake.
I turn now to other aspects of globalisation. I should like to deal first with its impact on national sovereignties. When the United Nations was established, it was taken for granted that it could proceed only on the basis of the nation state. That remains the position and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future, but we should not ignore the considerable change that globalisation is bringing to the world in that regard.
The most obvious sign is the emergence of the great trading blocks. Few nations believe that they can continue to stand aside from membership of a trading area,


although I realise that some of my hon. Friends believe that we should do so. As we all know, such membership carries rules that circumscribe the freedom of action of national Governments. This process will continue and accelerate, and there will come a time when the nation state is no longer seen as the best guarantor of liberty and prosperity.
The emergence of international criminal courts and many other institutional innovations are heralds of that change. It will be important to ensure that whatever takes the place of the nation state protects the interests of the poor. For example, that is why it is of cardinal importance that poor nations should be resourced to play a full and well-informed part in negotiations that involve international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. It is no use the rich countries claiming that they are keen to help the poor and then skewing the international instruments of world trade in their own favour, either by accident or design.
As an element of the interaction between sovereignty and globalisation, the future of cultural diversity will be a key area of debate. For example, it is already clear that, in many countries and in many religious communities, practices have evolved over the centuries which are regarded by their practitioners as inalienable elements of their cultural identity. Yet in the modern globalised world, many of those practices are no longer regarded as acceptable. An extreme example of that is the fact that the Taliban's insistence that girls should not receive a modern education is almost universally condemned.
One of the defining moments of the new globalisation was the Beijing conference, at which almost every country on earth signed up to treating women in a way that flies in the face of many of the practices glorified with the name of culture and carried out in many places on earth.
In the United Kingdom, the practice of some immigrant families of coercing their daughters into marrying a man from their former home so as to preserve their traditional culture is repudiated both by the girls and by the vast majority of British citizens. Of course, those who cling to such practices are quick to cry "Racism" when they are rebuked, but it is vital for the world's health that we have a grown-up debate about such issues and are not paralysed by the fear of being automatically and wrongly branded as racist.
The mother tongue is another such global issue. The advantages to the world of having a lingua franca in which to transact business and international relations are clear, but there is are powerful arguments in the other direction about the advantages of diversity and the damage done to a people's diversity if their language is ignored.
Britain has enjoyed a huge advantage in speaking English, not least because it is the language of the most powerful and richest nation on earth, but that advantage is eroding fast. Already, English no longer commands more than half the internet transactions in the world. When China and India achieve internet access on the scale already enjoyed here, the position will change again.
In the USA, Spanish is growing faster than any other language. Unless we are to trust to technology to provide cheap, instantaneous translation, we shall need to have an international debate on this issue also. It matters to the poor because there is no doubt that many poor people will

not be able to enjoy anything like equal opportunities if they are not taught in a language that commands international understanding, yet it is precisely the poor who need to have their cultural identity protected.
I am astonished at how little use is made of parliamentarians in international discourse. We can and must do better. For example, in the EU the scandal of the incompetent aid budget needs parliamentary attention at every level. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) instituted a meeting of the Chairs of International Development Committees. That is a start, but we should also be having regular dialogue with our opposite numbers in our fellow European Parliaments.
The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union should be taking a lead. There is no reason why international development should not feature much more prominently on their agendas. For example, there is no reason why parliamentary pressure should not be being applied in every country on a co-ordinated basis to encourage companies to assist their work forces to resist the ravages of AIDS or to deal with corruption, yet we do not do it.
In passing, I must confess to utter astonishment that when I asked the DFID if there were any opportunities for me to help with development education—on a part-time, voluntary, or even paid basis—once I had retired, it could think of only one, and that in two years' time. I do not suggest that I would be very good at it, but after four years on the International Development Committee, there might be an audience somewhere sufficiently ignorant to learn something even from me.
The global challenge of poverty is, above all, the challenge of children. Not all countries are like Cambodia, with 46 per cent. of their people under 15, but in Brazil, the Philippines, India and many other countries, the population is disproportionately young. If those children have no worthwhile education, no job and nowhere to live, they will steal, fight and emigrate, and we shall rue the day.
If we cannot hope to make globalisation work for the poor at nil or almost nil initial cost to ourselves, it will eventually cost us serious money. If we do not commit the resources, we shall fail the biggest moral test of the century. Moreover, we shall find ourselves paying out far more a little down the track as we try to contain global instability, global disease, global movements of population and, no doubt, a growing disenchantment with global capitalism and global democracy.

6 pm

Jane Griffiths: It is good to have an opportunity to debate the White Paper, especially as the previous international development White Paper was not discussed on the Floor of the House. I am especially pleased to take part in the debate because international development is one of the most important issues in my constituency. In Reading, East, only banning hunting has generated more letters. I do not know whether that is unusual. That interest was highlighted when the previous Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), visited Reading last autumn. We had one of the best—and best attended—public meetings for some time.
Each July, music, arts and food from around the world can be experienced in Reading at the famous world of music, arts and dance—WOMAD—festival. There is a


standing invitation to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to join me and the world on the banks of Thames this July.
Reading's interest in the world is reflected in its many active voluntary groups, which campaign and work on international issues. I am pleased to have visited many of them in the four years that I have been a Member of Parliament. My views are informed by visits to such groups, including those of Reading Oxfam, Amnesty International and the World Development Movement. Two constituents in particular, John and Jackie Oversby, keep me informed about international development issues almost weekly. The people whom I have contacted have been delighted with the Government's and the Department's achievements so far, especially the leadership that we have shown on debt relief. However, they have anxieties about some other matters, which I shall outline shortly.
We should consider the White Paper against a background of positive progress on international development issues. Development assistance is 0.31 per cent. of gross domestic product and is moving back up to the target of 0.7 per cent. The previous Labour Government achieved 0.5 per cent., but the previous Conservative Government almost halved that figure, which dipped to 0.26 per cent. in 1997. We all welcome ending the practice of tying aid to trade.
The impact of economic growth on poverty is shown in the change in the number of poor people who live on a dollar a day. In east Asia and the Pacific, it fell from 452 million in 1990 to 257 million in 1998. It is expected to fall much further and that decline is most welcome. However, I am worried that the pattern has not been repeated elsewhere. Other hon. Members have also drawn attention to that. The average per capita income in African countries has fallen by more than half in relative terms since 1965. Not so many decades ago, many African countries were among the richer countries; that is no longer the case.
Reports from the World Bank show that the world is dividing into those who benefit from globalisation and those who do not. I should like to know the Department's plans for assessments to identify the impact of growth, trade and investment on poverty. I know that the Department has given some consideration to the problem of the increasing inequality in and between regions. Globalisation seems to have exacerbated those problems, and I am especially keen to know what thought has been given to them.
Growth offers a great chance to lift people out of poverty, and we need to ensure that everyone benefits from it. However, conflict is a great generator of poverty and inhibitor of growth. For example, Sudan has been in conflict for decades. The presence of oil reserves literally fuels the conflict.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Bangladesh with Population Concern, and I witnessed the difference in affluence that can occur in regions. In Bangladesh, a woman in the wealthiest fifth of the population is 16 times as likely to have trained assistance in child birth as a woman in the poorest fifth.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to assure me that the question of institutional reform will be addressed when we look at development assistance. European Union institutions have been far too slow in

disbursing their funds. The Committee referred recently to the slow release of funds which meant that, for example, a director of an NGO working in Pakistan had to take out a personal loan to prevent a project from foundering because of the slow release of funds. That is unacceptable; we must have a payment code for the EU.
We must find ways to encourage the use of unspent funds—funds that are unspent because, for example, the conditions for disbursement are not there, as in Sudan. We must encourage the use of those funds, which may be just sitting in accounts, to benefit highly indebted poor countries.
Does my right hon. Friend support the World Wide Fund for Nature's call for land tenure reform to minimise poverty? There are suggestions about that subject in the White Paper. The WWF has also highlighted the devastating reduction in species diversity in many countries, which has been exacerbated by conflict and by unsustainable over-consumption by impoverished populations who have little choice in the matter. Does she agree that reduction in species diversity is a time bomb that could destroy the future of stable food supplies for the world's poor?
In my constituency, we have the BBC monitoring service at Caversham Park, where we listen to and, I hope, help to inform the entire world. I thank the House for listening to me and I thoroughly welcome the White Paper. I invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to visit my constituency, where she will be assured of a warm welcome and a listening ear.

Mr. Edward Leigh: This is a very important debate on a vital issue, and it is a wake-up call. If we in the west do not take more interest at the highest political level, we will reap the whirlwind in the next century.
I have been reading a lot about the Spanish civil war and I have been struck by the divisions in European society in the early part of the previous century and by the huge cruelty engendered by civil wars within Europe as a result of grotesque inequalities of opportunity and wealth. In Europe, we have created a real consensus—there has also been a consensus in the debate—based on the belief that we should allow free enterprise to flourish and have effective social security, health and education systems for everybody. As we have been so successful, we have created far calmer societies where the enormous hatreds that spawned fascism, communism and civil wars have declined.
It is often said that the public are disillusioned with politics, but part of that disillusionment is because we are so successful. But while we have been successful within our own societies, the general political system has overlooked the massive divide between the developed and the developing world. If we do not take action soon, we could face enormous conflict throughout the next century.
Everybody here takes a great interest in the subject, and I do not need to remind the House of the enormous well of misery and despair; 1 billion people live on a dollar a day and 5,000 Africans have died from AIDS over the past few days. These facts are familiar to us.
Despite the tremendous consensus among those on the Front Benches, how much interest in the issue is there outside? We have had a splendid speech from the


Secretary of State, but a lot of her natural supporters are falling away from her and support many of the sentiments expressed by the anti-globalisation activists. I am not referring to the rioters, whom only a tiny minority would support. There is no point in Members on both sides of the Chamber agreeing if support is being lost outside, so I am speaking to alert people of a conservative disposition—a right-wing disposition, even—to the fact that we have to handle the issue correctly.
Many people who share my prejudices and political instincts are worried about asylum seekers. We can have all the controls in the world—indeed, we can do whatever we like—but nature abhors a vacuum. If there are huge inequalities of wealth, the strength of a system does not matter, because no matter how many times people are thrown out of a country, they will come back again, and can we blame them? Many people of my disposition care passionately about defence, but we shall have to spend a lot more on it in the next century if we do not take the issue of inequality seriously.
I want to alert conservative-minded people so that they wake up to their responsibilities. It is easy for us to lecture people about paying more tax and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) showed just how derisory is our contribution to development—0.3 per cent. of gross national product. However, will any of us tell our electorate in the next three weeks, "We're spending too much on the national health service and the pupil:teacher ratio"? No, we will not. Will we tell people that we will increase taxation? No, we will not. That is the reality of the situation.
We face an appalling dilemma, which has a moral aspect. From a Christian or any other perspective, how can we allow such a large proportion of the world to live in such abject poverty? Those who are not interested in morals should be interested in the threat to freedom, the defence threat or any other threat posed by allowing people to live in such dire poverty. However, none of us has the moral courage to ask our electorate to pay more tax.
I do not know what the solution is, but I must deal with three points, the first of which I made during interventions: there is a lot of scope for encouraging charitable giving. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) began the process with gift aid and I pay tribute to the Chancellor, who has widened its scope considerably, but we must ask ourselves why American society is so much more generous.
Charitable donations come off the tax bill of American citizens, which is a tremendous incentive, so they can say, "I do not believe in a lot of what the Government do, but if I give to charities I can decide which good causes my money goes to."

Clare Short: That is important. Americans are generous individually, but America is very mean in its contributions to international development. The richest country in the world is also the meanest, as it contributes only 0.1 per cent. of gross national product, so we do not want to imitate that. Charitable giving by individuals is good, but Governments must fulfil certain obligations, because some things only Governments can do.

Mr. Leigh: Of course, I accept that and I am not suggesting for a moment that Governments are not

important. I want contributions to increase towards the level recommended by the United Nations, but I am trying to be realistic about how quickly we can convince our electorate that we can deal with the problem through taxation. We can learn from the United States model; it encourages charitable giving and we should consider it. Furthermore, the Government have made progress on payroll giving.
My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) put the second point again and again, and it is an important one. This country leapt forward when it introduced good governance, whereby it began to pay judges and civil servants properly and started to root out corruption. That is achievable today elsewhere, and if we divert more resources in that direction, we will do much.
The third point is set out in the White Paper in the excellent chapter 4, which is entitled "Harnessing Private Finance". I refer hon. Members to paragraph 159 on page 51, which states:
Domestic tax policy is crucial. In recent years, many developing countries have offered investment subsidies, including tax incentives, to attract transnational firms. Such subsidies are intended to generate new employment. But in practice they often fail to alter the investment decisions of firms … The experience of Uganda and other countries suggests that simplification of a country's tax regime may be a more effective way to encourage companies to invest.
Those three measures—harnessing private finance, encouraging charitable giving and promoting good governance—are the means by which we can take forward this debate. If we do not do so, we could be in serious trouble. This is the most important issue facing this Parliament. It could unite right and left, and I hope that this debate will help that process.

Mr. Harry Barnes: There has been a lot of talk about consensus from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) and others. I suspect that part of the consensus in the Chamber is due to the fact that there is a great deal of admiration felt between the Select Committee and the Department for International Development, and that they often see eye to eye. Indeed, the Select Committee agreed on 32 items out of 42 in one departmental report. The consensus goes beyond that in many respects, but I suspect that there is no overriding consensus. This could be a bit like those Venn diagrams that interlink: the area in the middle represents the part where everyone agrees. To a great extent, that is the area that we have been discussing. However, the contents of the other areas of that diagram might enliven our understanding.
I am not going to cause discontent by discussing the issues on which I have a difference of opinion. I want to use this opportunity to concentrate on one item, although I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the House will not think that I am just a single-issue campaigner with no other ideas, or that I do not want to link my remarks to a wider analysis of the subject.
Paragraph 36 of the report that the International Development Committee recently produced on the globalisation White Paper referred to the Tobin tax. It pointed out that a number of submissions had been made


about a tax relating to international currency speculation, and that the Secretary of State had been attracted to the idea but was
not optimistic about it being implemented in the near future.
The report also stated that the Secretary of State had promised to forward to the Select Committee a note on the Government's policy on the Tobin tax. I do not know whether that has been made available yet, as the report came out only recently. The note has certainly not yet been produced by the Select Committee, so perhaps it is still on its way. I would be interested to see it. I am not arguing that investigating the case for the Tobin tax—or even producing such a measure, in the end—would be a panacea for all the problems that we have discussed today. However, it would be a significant advance.
International currency speculation involves exchanges of money worth up to $1.5 trillion a day, mainly unrelated to trade in real goods and services. Instead, it involves the advantage to be gained from trading in other people's currencies. Many of the problems of disruption in the third world have often been associated with earlier occurrences of currency speculation. In fact, the economic causes of the break-up of Yugoslavia should also be examined in terms of its then currency problems. Such problems can create social disruption and allow people with extremist ideas to find a ready market for their particular approach.
Those speculative currency flows undermine the powers of national Governments and regional blocs, and create massive instability. Tobin suggested that a small levy of 0.25 per cent. on those speculative transactions would dampen down the scale and scope of speculation, and raise a substantial revenue of $250 billion a year. Those revenues could be used for the very purposes that we have discussed today: they could be devoted to health care, environmental protection and other forms of development. I suppose that this is a bit like the tax on smoking: the tax does not end smoking, but it raises revenue. As long as globalisation produces the gains that it is currently producing—for that is the reality—there will clearly be a huge opportunity for the raising of funds.
The levy would have to be universal, or nearly universal, and safeguards would be required to minimise diversion. At present the proposal is backed by the Canadian Parliament, the Belgian. Parliament, the Finnish Government, the Indian Prime Minister and the Swedish deputy Prime Minister, as well as George Soros. The campaign in this country is led by War on Want, and 144 Members of Parliament—on a cross-party basis—have signed an early-day motion supporting the measure.
I should like the Government to take the lead on the Tobin tax in the way they took the lead on debt relief. That strategy is not operating fully yet, but we played a large role in connection with it. We have led the argument internationally, and have made some distinct achievements.
The Secretary of State's responses to the Select Committee suggest that the Department for International Development is rather more sympathetic to the issue that we are discussing than the Treasury. Perhaps it is just as well that I am now pushing at a half-open door. One of the Treasury's many objections is that speculation would go offshore, and that evasion would result from the refusal of certain areas to agree to provisions that might operate in some major dealing countries.
About 12 countries could be linked with the proposal, which might tie down a great deal of world development. It would limit scope for evasion, and onshore organisations could be registered so that guarantee payments were legally protected. Electronic processes relating to trade would make the taxing of currency transactions relatively easy to administer, and would reduce the possibilities of tax evasion. Stock exchanges themselves could refuse to trade or quote with those dealers or rogue areas.
The Treasury has produced another set of objections, which were presented to me following a meeting during which, along with the director of War on Want and others, I visited the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. It was suggested that four of our proposals were already being dealt with, which, in my view, did not rule out the principles involved in the Tobin tax.
Alternatives were offered. The Government emphasised the existence of codes and standards which could deliver transparency and accountability, and which covered fiscal policy, financial and monetary policy, corporate governance, best practice for financial institutions and the surveillance machinery that should be associated with that, on an international scale. If the Government can advocate such policies, there is surely no reason why they should not accept our argument about the Tobin tax.
The Government propose bringing together the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and key regulatory authorities in a financial stability forum, which would tackle many problems relating to instability in world markets. They have stressed two points that are very third way and new Labour: partnership needs to exist between the public and private sectors on an international scale and there needs to be agreement with the G7. I might not be into the mixed economy or an advocate of it, but I am realistic enough to realise that we must operate in the world as we find it, rather than as we would like to find it, although sometimes, as well as making concessions to reality, we should mention what we are after.
The Government have also said that new social principles should come to the fore of the work of the World Bank and the United Nations. That is equivalent to the principles on freedom of the market and social justice which are also advocated by the third way. They are now projected on an international scale.
Those principles are relevant to the argument about the Tobin tax. We are approaching a general election. I believe that those parties that agreed to advocate that measure would win enthusiastic support. I note that what we consider to be our sister party in Northern Ireland, the Social Democratic and Labour party, has adopted the Tobin tax provisions.
I ask the Secretary of State to explain the situation in the UN. Kofi Annan helped to set up a panel to investigate the Tobin tax, but it is beginning to look as if it has been pushed to one side. Some of us believe that the decision that the panel will make on that tax is not that which we feel that it should adopt.
I appeal to the Government to take the matter on board. They cannot produce a tax on international currency speculation by themselves; it must be a matter of massive international agreement. The Secretary of State said that it might be something for our grandchildren to consider. I realise that it will not be introduced tomorrow, but I hope that we may make progress on it in my lifetime.


The Government are in an ideal position to get it up and running because of their achievements in international development, so I hope that the matter will be taken on board and seriously considered.

Mr. Paul Goggins: It is a privilege to contribute to this interesting debate. I have been an hon. Member for four years and I think that it has been one of the best debates that I have heard on an important issue. The quality of the speeches has been superb. The issue on which we all seem to agree is that self-interest and the common good are two sides of the same coin, and that to survive as a sustainable planet we must not only create wealth, develop skill and talent, but ensure that no one is left behind.
I should say that I am a member of the board of CAFOD—the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development—the development agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. I am delighted that, this week, my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Mr. Dobbin) has sponsored a display of CAFOD's work in the Upper Waiting Hall. I am also delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is to visit CAFOD next Tuesday to sign the programme partnership agreement between her Department and the organisation.
The display upstairs carries a short extract from a speech by a woman from Zambia, Mulima Kufekisa Akapelway, in St. Chad's cathedral, Birmingham during the G8 summit in May 1998. My right hon. Friend may remember that—not only is the cathedral in her constituency, but she was in it when the speech was made. It is worth recalling Mulima's words:
Calling from Africa, standing by ourselves, we have to beg for debt relief. But standing alongside you … we are in a position to demand justice.
I think that that statement encapsulates not only the work of non-governmental organisations such as CAFOD, but what we as politicians, and everyone else who is concerned about the issue, are trying to do—forge a new solidarity between rich and poor and powerful and powerless people, to work together for a more just world order.
I think that the Secretary of State is right to say that, of itself, globalisation is neither good nor bad, but that it is how we shape it and what we make of it that really matters. What is clearly undeniable is the fact that globalisation is here, changing our world profoundly and rapidly. Every day there are 3 million international travellers and $1.5 trillion travels round world markets. I was astounded to learn that, in 2000, there were more than 100 billion minutes of international telephone calls. That is a staggering statistic.
Whether we like it or not, we are all caught up in globalisation. Food and clothes, telecommunications and manufacturing industries are all part of the global market. For me, one of the great ironies of Tuesday's demonstrations was the fact that, in Wednesday morning's newspapers, every photograph of the events showed people who wanted an end to global capitalism wearing Levi jeans, Adidas track suits and Nike trainers—

Mr. Wells: And using mobile telephones.

Mr. Goggins: Yes.
One of the problems that we face in trying to gain a better understanding of globalisation is the fact that globalisation is very hard to measure. I was interested recently to read about the work of A. T. Kearney and Foreign Policy magazine, who tried to draw up a globalisation index in which they analysed 50 developing countries and some key emerging markets around the world. Although I would not say that their findings are the gospel, they are certainly worth some consideration.
One of the findings was that globalisation is not uniform and that some of its aspects work faster than others. In the late 1990s, for example, when there were some trade difficulties in other sectors, the telecommunications industry grew apace. Moreover, some of the global gaps are not only between rich and poor. The digital divide, for example, distinguishes the United States, Canada and Scandinavian countries, where almost half the people have access to the internet. There is therefore a gap not only between those countries and developing countries, but between them and other developed countries.
Perhaps the most interesting claim made in the study was that there is a link between globalisation and income equality, which is quite the reverse of the usual arguments with which we are familiar. The study said that the link was particularly distinct in some of the emerging-market countries. Using the index, the study highlighted Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary as countries that are both more globalised and more equal than other countries, such as Russia, China and Argentina, which tended to be less globalised and more unequal. As I said, although I am sure that the study is far from perfect, it gives us at least a start or handle to measure the impacts of globalisation.
The international development targets are clearly crucial in attempting to ensure that globalisation makes the world a fairer place. They include halving world poverty, providing universal primary education and reducing mortality rates for under fives by two thirds, all by 2015. In trying to achieve those goals, it has been absolutely essential to get the support of the IMF and the World Bank. I certainly applaud the Secretary of State's efforts in striving also to obtain the commitment of the World Trade Organisation to those international development targets. Targets are often dull and meaningless things, but I think that those targets can inspire and energise us. As many hon. Members have said today, it is also possible to achieve them.
Many hon. Members have also already made the point that growth alone is not sufficient. The World Bank has estimated that, if we keep growth at current levels and remain as unequal as we are now, the proportion of the world's population living in poverty would decrease from 24 per cent. to 22 per cent. by 2015. Clearly, therefore, growth is essential—but so is redistribution. I am talking not about old-fashioned redistribution in which money is taken from one group and given to another, but about a much more dynamic process in which we have real investment, real opportunity and skills and real development that really connect those who live in the poorest parts of the world with the rest of us.
I should conclude my remarks now. However, as I said, this has been a tremendous debate on a very important topic.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: I echo the closing words of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins). I, too, think that this has been an extremely valuable debate. I am very pleased and privileged to be here to wind it up. This is a rare opportunity for a decent debate on international development. I do not want to labour the point, because the Secretary of State and the Minister know that, however often we clash across the Chamber, we have a commonality of purpose. Conservative Members have been genuinely distressed that she has not had as many opportunities as we would wish to come to the Dispatch Box to discuss what is an extremely important topic.
In the spirit of the debate, I, too, congratulate the Secretary of State, as we approach what may be a general election—this may be one of the last occasions on which I stand at the Dispatch Box on this side of the Chamber—on her tenure in the Department. The final White Paper that she has produced covers a large number of topics under the umbrella of globalisation and represents a significant contribution to the debate both at home and abroad, which is much to be praised. To have carved out the new Department, and to have had the complementary Select Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), has been another noteworthy achievement.
The Secretary of State has made great personal efforts, and I hope that, by paying her this handsome tribute, I make up for the witchy comments that I sometimes make from this side of the Chamber, which needs must be made, because we cannot always agree and it is only right that we should challenge the Government, as she did so ably when she was in this position.
The Secretary of State made an excellent speech in which she condemned the violence of the demonstrators at Seattle and elsewhere. She and many other speakers showed up the double standards often displayed by such people. She did not even mention what she was up to in Seattle, but I happen to know, because I took part in a Standing Committee debate on a statutory instrument earlier this week, connected with the fact that she signed up, in the margins of Seattle, to the WTO advisory centre on law, which will give the poorest countries access to legal advice in trade disputes. As I said in that Committee, I thoroughly commend that. I supported the approval of the statutory instrument and asked some questions that the Minister answered satisfactorily.
1 was very interested to hear what the Secretary of State said about the downloading of the White Paper. I wonder whether the systems can identify the people who access the information, because it is all very well knowing the number of people who clock in to receive the words of wisdom but we would also like to know the qualitative element, and whether technology will be developed quickly enough to enable us to identify those people with whom we are communicating.
The Secretary of State outlined a vision that is not dissimilar to our own and made some valid points on the international situation. We all agree that we are at a crossroads in relation to international organisations and we all hope to see the reform of the relevant institutions, not least the United Nations and the European Union. For once, the EU did not come in for much criticism in this debate. I suppose we take it as read now. We certainly

hope that the path to reform will be trodden at a much quicker pace than heretofore. That is common ground between us. It should not be impossible in this new millennium to ensure that people throughout the world achieve basic standards. With correctly targeted programmes and the identification of the key elements for each area—because they all have different requirements—it should not be outwith the wit of man to make progress.

Clare Short: Or woman.

Mrs. Gillan: I shall come to the role of women shortly.
The Secretary of State kindly took an intervention on the pyrethrum issue, and I have had my file copied for her. A marvellous company in Penn in my constituency, Agropharm Ltd, produces that alternative to organophosphate and organochiorine-based insecticides, made out of chrysanthemums. I wrote to the Secretary of State on the issue on 5 March, but I understand that she has had other things to do. She has undertaken to consider the issue, and we would be grateful for her comments on it.
The Secretary of State mentioned some relevant institutions. I hope that the absence of mention of the British Council and scant reference to the Commonwealth does not mean that we have forgotten those institutions. I wish to take this opportunity to praise the work that is done by the British Council and to point out that the Commonwealth should be a great force for good in the future.
The right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) was the first Member I met when I came into the House, and I think that he was the Opposition spokesman on the subject at the time. He has an impressive track record and made a wide-ranging contribution. He touched on Kyoto and the environment, praised Oxfam for its advocacy and briefings, and discussed debt relief under the HIPC initiative and the role of education in the third world. He was also generous enough to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) for his creation of the safe havens in Iraq, and he also referred to Nelson Mandela's inspiration, which is an inspiration to us all. I was pleased to see Nelson Mandela at the concert on Sunday celebrating South Africa, and I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution to this debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) was elected Chairman of the Select Committee on 16 July 1997. He is truly the Frank Sinatra of politics, but he is really going away this time and we will miss him. In fact, I do not know what we will do without him. He spoke passionately about the empowerment of women, and I agree that if we can reach the women of a society and ensure that they are enabled and empowered, we can improve that society's hopes and aspirations.
I also share my right hon. Friend's complaint about timetabling. He echoed a theme that has become common in this debate, which is the need for better co-operation between the Departments, including the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry. We all know that cross-departmental issues are the most difficult to solve for Ministers and Secretaries of State, and many hon. Members explored that theme during the debate. I am sure that the Secretary of State will take those points on board.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sarwar) welcomed the White Paper and spoke about his constituency. When he said that India and Pakistan had wasted money on nuclear proliferation at the expense of their people, a murmur of assent ran around the House. He also championed women and children, and their education, and that was another common theme of the contributions from hon. Members today. The hon. Gentleman spoke about shipbuilding in his constituency—rightly so—and about GM crops. We all know that GM crops will not solve all the food shortages in the developing world. GM technology may be of benefit in the future but, before large-scale planting begins, we need to ensure that proper trials are undertaken and that crops are safe. We should not threaten the poorest nations with crops that could reduce fertile land to desert.
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) allowed her frustration to show a little at the beginning of her contribution. She gave a poetic glimpse into the history of the black country, and managed to talk about a song from the film "Mange Tout" that mentioned Tesco. However, she named some companies—Rolls Royce, BP, Shell, Nestlé, Cadbury, Thornton, Rio Tinto, Balfour Beatty, Tesco and Sainsbury's—and I should be keen to see the examples of alleged wrongdoing to which she referred. I should like the hon. Lady to write to each of those companies so that they can provide an explanation.

Dr. Tonge: I have done that.

Mrs. Gillan: I am glad that she has done that already. I should be interested to look at her correspondence, to see exactly what the complaints were and how the companies responded. We should not always rail against multinationals and tell them to keep away from development, as their foreign direct investment is often most important to the countries that receive it.
The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) as usual made an excellent contribution. He made four points—on AIDS, mobility of labour, money laundering and trade—and they were well expressed.
What can I say about my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe)? Once again, his outstanding contribution made us all think. I hope that the Secretary of State will find something for him when he retires—although he should not be allowed to retire, as he has a wealth of experience and education to offer.
The hon. Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) spoke briefly. I believe that people in Reading, East are more interested in foxes than in international development, but the hon. Lady spoke with fervour about the slow release of funds.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) spoke in his usual thoughtful and thought-provoking way. He issued a wake-up call.
The hon. Members for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) and for Wythenshawe and Sale, East also made excellent contributions—especially the latter, who is a member of the CAFOD board.
I reserve my final praise for my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), who has led me in this brief for some three years. He has led the

shadow team on international development from the front. He gave a reflective speech, in which he spoke of our three aims—good governance, working with the NGOs, and reforming the multilateral organisations. My hon. Friend has moved the discussion on and has given a blueprint for the future in the work that he has put into "First Things First".
Finally, I thank the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, who will answer the debate. I, too, have enjoyed this debate and I feel that, at least in the past four years and thanks to the Secretary of State, the debate on international development has been moved forward.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Chris Mullin): As all hon. Members I think agree, we have had a very good debate. I am only sorry that more hon. Members could not take part, but some have been tied up in Committee duties upstairs. I hope that debates on international development will become a regular feature of the parliamentary calendar, and it may be a better test of demand if they are not always surrounded by one-line Whips.
I want to add my tribute to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), who has made yet another final appearance—although I think that this one was positively his last. He and the Select Committee on International Development, which he chairs, have played an important part in the sea change that has taken place in our attitude to overseas development over the past few years. We are grateful for the constructive, positive and rigorous oversight of the work of the Department that the Select Committee has offered under his wise stewardship.
We shall miss the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford, and the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), not least because they belong to that dwindling band of one-nation Tories that is so fast becoming an extinct species in the modern Conservative party. Whatever their next incarnations, I wish them well.
The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) made a constructive and thoughtful speech which rose to the spirit of the occasion. In his final point, he talked about withdrawing from some of the multilateral institutions with which he was not happy. I hope that that will be a last resort. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) said, it is generally better to stay and fight one's corner than to take the ball and play elsewhere.
The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford gave us a long list of the countries in which the number of people living in poverty has been halved during the last generation or two. That was a worthwhile point, because we need to remind ourselves from time to time that we are not up against impossible odds. It can be done and it has been done, and we must get used to publicising successes. He also asked about the Proceeds of Crime Bill, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington). The Bill was published last March and will be introduced in the next Session. I agree that it is an important and necessary piece of legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sarwar) mentioned the outrageous attempt by a number of multinationals to claim patents on things such


as basmati rice. I was delighted to hear that they have been seen off this time around. I understand that patent offices around the world have cancellation procedures, so it is worth bearing it in mind that once a patent has been granted, it can be retracted if sufficient evidence exists to suggest that it should not have been granted in the first place. Perhaps we should look at a few more of the patents that have wrongly been granted, as my hon. Friend outlined.
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) rightly reminded us of the misbehaviour of some multinationals. I think that she would agree that there are good ones and bad ones. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, many of them operate higher standards than local employers, so we should not lump them all together. One of the most effective ways of mitigating misbehaviour by multinational companies is to empower the consumer. Many of those companies want to be loved, and they can be embarrassed into changing their behaviour—witness the outcome of the recent court case in South Africa over the HIV/AIDS drugs. There have been other examples in which the power of the consumer has faced down mighty corporations when sometimes not even Governments have been successful in doing so.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie said, quite rightly, that prevention of AIDS is more important than a cure. We had a very good debate on this in Westminster Hall the other day, which I think that most right hon. and hon. Members who are here today attended. The point was repeatedly made that even if the drugs were available at a relatively low price, most of those who are most affected are beyond the reach of effective health systems. Therefore, the most useful things that we can do are to encourage prevention and help establish effective health systems.
The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) made an interesting speech, and a good one. He said that we ignore at our peril the scale of the crisis that is growing, and that if we continue to ignore it we will reap the whirlwind. He was right to make that point, and we shall bear it in mind when we talk about what prompts asylum seekers to come to this country and the desperation that exists. One has only to look at some of the perilous ways in which they make their way here. Would we put ourselves and our children in a truck or send them to a destination, without adults, unaccompanied, as some people do? They know that they will never see their children again, but hope that they will at least lead a better life. Such desperation lies behind any rational discussion of asylum seeking.
The hon. Gentleman expressed the hope that he would alert Conservative-minded people to that problem. I share his hope and trust that his voice will be heard in those parts of middle England that my right hon. Friend and I cannot reach. I look forward to the day when the main political parties compete for votes through an appeal to the best instincts of middle England rather than the worst.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) asked about the Tobin tax and the response to the Select Committee report. The response will be

issued tomorrow and a note on the Tobin tax will be attached. I am sorry that it was not possible to provide the House with the response in time for today's debate. As hon. Members may know, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been attending the spring meeting of the World Bank in Washington. She returned only yesterday and has thus only recently been able to approve the text; that is the reason for the delay.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire is well aware that the great difficulty with the Tobin tax is that to make it effective we have to persuade everyone to sign up to it. It is rather like the proposal to tax aviation fuel. It is another desirable objective but unless we can persuade everyone to sign up, some countries could drive a coach and horses through the plan.

Mr. Rowe: It is clear that the hon. Gentleman does not intend to respond to any of my points. I hoped that he might mention the fact that we are still in danger—both in DFID and in the NGOs—of acting de haut en bas towards the people we most want to help.

Mr. Mullin: That may be so. I am sorry that I do not have time to reply to all the points made in the debate. During the few minutes that remain, I should like to make one or two points of my own. I am happy to repeat to the House what a good fellow the hon. Gentleman is and how useful his contributions have been over the years—[Interruption.] I cannot promise him a job.
We have a good story to tell. Thanks in no small measure to the robust leadership provided by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, there has been a sea change in the way that we manage overseas development. DFID is an independent Department with its own seat at the Cabinet table. Overseas aid is no longer a tool of foreign policy, still less a tool of trade policy. As a share of gross national product, it is rising year by year, although it is still far too low. Furthermore, our aid is now firmly targeted on the poorest people in the poorest countries.
We are setting an example that other countries and, more important, international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, are beginning to follow. What is most heartening is that both sides of the House have signed up to our approach. Indeed, I hope that it is about to be enshrined in law.
As many hon. Members have remarked, however, there are no grounds for complacency. As many of the speeches have shown, no one is under any illusions as to the scale of the task that we face. However, at least we can move forward in the knowledge that there is a fair measure of agreement about where we need to arrive and how to get there. We can take heart, too, from the fact that the international community is increasingly pulling in the same direction. What matters is the political will to achieve what we all know must be done, and I assure the House that there is no lack of political will on the part of the Government.

It being Seven o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Child Abduction

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pearson.]

7 pm

Sir John Stanley: The Parliamentary Secretary will remember that we last met on 24 October last year, when I secured an Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall before the special commission meeting in The Hague to review the operation of the 1980 Hague convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction. I am very glad to return to that extremely important subject now that the special commission meeting has taken place.
As the Parliamentary Secretary knows, I am a vice-chairman of the all-party group on child abduction, but I am speaking entirely in my individual capacity and in no way on behalf of the parliamentary group. I am sorry that I feel impelled to say that the responses that the all-party group has had from the Lord Chancellor have been singularly less than helpful in the run-up to the special commission meeting.
I wish to refer to two specific issues, the first of which relates to the letter that the members and officers of the all-party group sent to the Lord Chancellor on 20 December, in which an entirely reasonable request was made. We said:
we also consider it would be desirable to have some parliamentary representation at the Special Commission meeting. Previously, Parliamentarians have been almost totally absent—indeed in the entire list of delegates to the 1997 Special Commission meeting there is only one Parliamentarian. We should like to propose therefore that two members of the British Parliament are included in the UK delegation, one from the Government and the other from the Opposition.
As we live in a parliamentary democracy and as—not entirely surprisingly—there are a relatively small number of hon. Members who have in-depth expertise on the 1980 child abduction convention, we believed that the Lord Chancellor would support our request, but we were disappointed. In his letter of 21 January, the Lord Chancellor replied:
I do not propose to increase the delegation to include parliamentary representation this time. I think that this would cause difficulty with other States".
So it was somewhat galling, to put it mildly, to find that a Member of the European Parliament was present at The Hague, as were two American Congressmen, who were, of course, part of the official United States Government delegation. I must make it clear that the presence of those three parliamentarians caused absolutely no difficulty whatever to the member states present at the special commission meeting, and the grounds on which the Lord Chancellor rejected our proposal were shown to be wholly spurious.
The Lord Chancellor's correspondence with the all-party group was less than helpful in the provision of information. We wrote again to the Lord Chancellor on 14 February, making this request:
The Group would wish to comment on the specific contents of the communique that the British Government would like to see agreed at the forthcoming Special Commission. We should be grateful therefore if you could provide the Group at the earliest possible date with the text of the current UK draft of the proposed final communique or a summary of its terms as wanted by the British Government.

The all-party group clearly wished to have the opportunity to comment on the objectives that the United Kingdom Government were trying to achieve at the special commission meeting. But the Lord Chancellor replied to the Chairman of our group, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Oler), on 6 March, offering no information whatever, although by this time we were less than three weeks away from the start of the special commission meeting He said:
Ahead of the Special Commission the Central Authority for England and Wales together with the Central Authority in Scotland and Northern Ireland is currently drafting a working paper for submission to the Permanent Bureau about topics which we feel ought to be on the agenda. I would be happy to send you a copy of this document upon completion.
Although on 6 March the Lord Chancellor was offering no information to the parliamentary group about what the British Government were trying to achieve at the forthcoming meeting, on 20 March I received a helpful and fully informative letter from the Foreign Secretary. He attached the full record and papers of a meeting which took place in the Foreign Office on 13 February, chaired by Baroness Scotland, at which officials of the Parliamentary Secretary's Department were represented, as well as those from outside, including Reunite. So the meeting was effectively in the public domain. One of those papers is headed "UK Aims For The Special Commission" and details the nine objectives of the British Government. In other words it provided precisely the information which the all-party group had sought and which the Lord Chancellor had declined to give us in his letter of 6 March.
I earnestly hope that lessons will be learned. I do not make that criticism of any other part of the British Government. Indeed in my extensive dealings with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Foreign Secretary, ambassadors overseas in their posts, including in Sweden where I went in January, and officials in the consular department of the Foreign Office and in the child abduction unit have been singularly helpful and informative. I hope that in future the same will be true of the Lord Chancellor himself.
My own Government having given me the thumbs down made me that much more determined to attend the special commission meeting, which I indeed did on behalf of the international NGO, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. I want to raise five particular issues in connection with what happened at The Hague.
The first concerns ministerial attendance. For a considerable period the all-party group had been pressing that for the first time there should be a ministerial presence for at least part of the special commission meeting. We felt it important in terms of the profile of the meeting—and of the child abduction issue—that the Governments who are parties to the 1980 convention should demonstrate at ministerial level that there is a deep desire to see that the operation of the convention was improved.
I acknowledge that the British Government made strenuous efforts over a considerable period to get international agreement to ministerial attendance. There was no lack of effort and it was not the British Government's fault that that was not achieved. It was somewhat disappointing, however, that the British Government did not move to the fall-back position which


was to include a Minister in the British delegation at The Hague. The composition of the British delegation was entirely a matter for the British Government. The Hague secretariat and other countries have no role to play in the composition of individual delegations. It would have been possible for the British delegation to include a Minister. It might well have included the Parliamentary Secretary, who would have been an excellent leader if she could have been present for even part of the time. An opportunity was lost. If the British—and perhaps the British alone—had sent a Minister as leader of their delegation, it would most surely have been noted by a considerable number of countries. It would have been a litmus test of the British Government's commitment to the importance of the issue. If they had blazed a trail on the special commission meeting, other Governments would have followed subsequently. I hope that that can be borne in mind for the future.
Secondly, I want to raise the question of the good practice guide for the operation of the Hague convention. Some of us have been deeply concerned for a considerable period about the wide variations of practice in the operation of the convention. We have also been concerned about what appears in individual cases to be conspicuous non-observance and non-compliance with the letter—and often the spirit—of the convention by countries that are party to it. That weakness of the convention could be materially overcome as a result of the production of a good practice guide by the permanent bureau of the Hague secretariat.
In my view, agreement on the guide was the single most substantive and important outcome of the meeting. It was a considerable achievement. I can tell the Parliamentary Secretary, who was unhappily, unable to be with us at The Hague, that that achievement was by no means easily brought about. The whole process by which agreement was reached was fraught with difficulty. A number of countries were undoubtedly worried about the production of a good practice guide. I suspect that some of them felt that the production of such a guide might expose deficiencies in their application of the convention.
Agreement was secured, however, and it was a signal achievement that is now reflected in the conclusions and recommendations of the Hague secretariat. I am delighted to see that paragraph 1.16 of that document states:
Contracting States to the Convention should co-operate with each other and with the Permanent Bureau to develop a good practice guide which expands on Article 7 of the Convention. This guide would be a practical, 'how-to' guide, to help implement the Convention. It would concentrate on operational issues and be targeted particularly at new Contracting States. It would not be binding nor infringe upon the independence of the judiciary. The methodology should be left to the Permanent Bureau.
We now have a tremendous opportunity in terms of the production of the good practice guide. Will the Parliamentary Secretary explain how the British Government will contribute to work on the guide, the time scale that they envisage for producing it and how they will try to ensure that it is of the highest quality and helpfulness in terms of the operation of the convention?
Thirdly, I want to comment on access. As we all know, the question of access by left-behind parents to children who have been abducted from them is one of the most difficult aspects of child abduction. In my view, it is the provision of the convention that is most widely flouted.

Happily, article 21 of the convention sets out the obligations for central authorities in unambiguous and clear terms. I should like to quote the two key sentences from article 21, which states:
The Central Authorities are hound by the obligations of co-operation which are set forth in Article 7 to promote the peaceful enjoyment of access rights and the fulfilment of any condition to which the exercise of those rights may be subject.
That first sentence is followed by the crucial second one, which states:
The Central Authorities shall take steps to remove, as far as possible, all obstacles to the exercise of such rights.
Those are unambiguous terms.

Ms Oona King: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me briefly to reflect on the issue of access. It would be inappropriate to raise individual cases falling under the convention, but having a constituent who has experience of the grave problem of access, I wish merely to support the right hon. Gentleman's comments and to request that the Minister elaborates on how British citizens and our constituents facing such problems will be helped to overcome them by the British Government and through the good practice guide.

Sir John Stanley: The hon. Lady will be glad to know that paragraphs 6.1 and 6.2 contain some positive recommendations on how access and adherence to the access provisions of the convention can be carried forward. Will the Minister, in her reply, set out how the Government will work towards the implementation of those recommendations? In particular, do they envisage a special commission specifically on access, which I believe was agreed at the special commission meeting? The broad view, which was not challenged at the meeting, was that there should be a special commission solely on access within one year of the meeting that took place in March. That was a valuable suggestion, which I hope has the Government's support.
The fourth point concerns new member states, which, again, was a considerable issue at the special commission meeting. I am aware that the Government are concerned about new member states that are not adequately equipped to carry out the convention's provisions becoming parties to the convention.
On 21 November last year, I received a reply from the then Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), listing a total of nine countries—Belarus, Brazil, Costa Rica, Fiji, Moldova, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Uzbekistan—which have each acceded to the Hague convention but whose recognition under article 38 has so far been withheld by the British Government.
The Minister of State, in his reply to me, said:
We take our own obligations under The Hague Convention very seriously and will only recognise the accession of states whom we are confident can implement the Convention effectively and efficiently. We are not planning to recognise the accession of any new states (apart from Fiji) to the Convention until the 4th Special Commission to review the Convention which will take place in The Hague from 22–28 March 2001."—[Official Report, 21 November 2000; Vol. 357, c. 132–33W.]
That special commission has now taken place and it would be helpful to know the Government's view on the recognition of the remaining eight countries and whether they will give their approval under article 38.
I hope that the Government will not be over-stringent about giving such approval. Where countries are willing to try to operate the convention, they should be given every encouragement to do so and, once they have acceded, we have an additional ability to help them to raise their standards and apply the convention in full.
Fifthly, several new obligations and a new work load have been given to the permanent bureau as a result of the special commission meeting. It is vital for the bureau to have sufficient funds to discharge its obligations under the convention, especially those that arose through the special commission meeting. It is no good conducting such meetings and asking the bureau to produce a good practice guide without funding the bureau so that it can fulfil the objectives that have been set. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the British Government will carry out their full financial obligations to the bureau, which has quite properly asked for a supplementary budget, and encourage other states to do that.
The special commission meeting was the most significant of the four such meetings that have taken place. It had the biggest attendance, but most important, it had the most substantive outcome. I try to be objective, but, as a Brit, I am probably biased. Having followed the matter closely, it is my considered view that of all the state parties to the convention, the British Government, in their preparation for the meeting, the working papers that they submitted and their work on the conclusions, made the greatest contribution to the meeting. The all-party group and international non-governmental organisations, such as Reunite and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children also made a significant contribution.
I hope that the progress that was made in March at The Hague will be followed by an equally significant contribution on implementing the special commission's recommendation, with the British Government in the van.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Jane Kennedy): I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley) for creating the opportunity to discuss child abduction and allowing me to report to the House the outcome of the recent Hague special commission. I also thank him for his courtesy in alerting me in advance to the main points that he wanted to make. He is clearly aggrieved by the responses of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor to the all-party group. If I have time, I hope to deal with those points in my speech. However, if the short time available does not permit that, I shall write to the all-party group and the right hon. Gentleman in more detail. I congratulate him on securing the debate.
Yesterday, I placed in the Libraries of both Houses the official report of the special commission, which was produced by the permanent bureau at The Hague. As the right hon. Gentleman said, he attended the special commission as one of the representatives of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. He and his colleagues, who represent different voluntary organisations from around the world, made a valuable and distinctive contribution to the special commission's work alongside that of the various national delegations.
I shall briefly consider the role of special commissions. In the past, they have been criticised for not achieving as much as they might, and for having a focus that was too narrowly retrospective rather than looking forward to ascertain how the convention's operation might be improved in future. The United Kingdom Government, other member states and the permanent bureau of the conference were determined that the last special commission meeting should be a more high-profile event with an additional impetus to achieve positive improvements in the operation of the convention, to the benefit of abducted children and their parents. That determination was shared by members of the all-party group.
I am pleased to report, notwithstanding the right hon. Gentleman's criticisms, that we substantially achieved our aim. The meeting was a considerable success. We gained agreement that there should be good practice guidance, to which he referred, and more guidance to states that wish to join. Having agreed that, it is important not to lose momentum. The agenda that was agreed at The Hague should be driven forward successfully. We are determined to play our part, and I hope to reassure the right hon. Gentleman about that.
The success of the special commission owes a great deal to the hard preparatory work that went into it beforehand, both by the permanent bureau and by officials in the UK and elsewhere. I am particularly grateful to the Foreign Office and to our embassies abroad for the tremendous work that they put in, lobbying other countries to agree to the proposals that the UK delegation would be putting forward.
I wish to address the right hon. Gentleman's criticisms of the responses and role of the Foreign Office in drawing the work together and liaising with other countries to achieve the right outcome from the special commission. There was also criticism that we were less than helpful in the provision of information. My noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor committed to provide that information as soon as it was completed. In the event, we did not draft a communiqué; instead, a number of working papers were drafted. Unfortunately, these were not finalised in time to be provided to the all-party group before the meeting at the Foreign Office to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. My colleagues at the Foreign Office, which chaired the meeting, sent the details to the all-party group as soon as they were available. Clearly that was not quick enough. We are always willing to accept criticism where it is justified but, on this occasion, we simply did not get the information ready to provide it in advance of the meeting.
In the past, special commissions have essentially been gatherings of civil servants and lawyers, representing the different central authorities. We also thought that, this time, it would be helpful to have a judicial contribution and a political contribution, with Ministers attending for at least one session.
The first of these proposals went down better than the second. I must confess that although the special commission was attended by a very large number of distinguished judges, it had already become clear before the commission that the great majority of member states did not think that attendance by Ministers would be


helpful. It would have been wrong in those circumstances for the UK to have gone—even led by such an eminent Minister as myself—if it would have been unhelpful. I had been looking forward to going, so I did regret that. However, it was right for the special commission that the delegation should go ahead without ministerial involvement.
In the event, the politicians were ably represented by the right hon. Gentleman, by Mrs. Mary Banotti of the European Parliament and by US Congressmen. I should stress that ministerial non-involvement should not be taken as an indication of lack of concern by the Government. It was a judgment that we had to arrive at, given the feedback that we got from other states participating in the special commission.
There was also a question as to whether representatives of the all-party group should be included in the UK delegation. The Government decided that that would not be appropriate on this occasion. The right hon. Gentleman will disagree with the view we took, but the national delegations—as opposed to the representatives of the other interested voluntary and international bodies—spoke for and represented their Governments and their central authorities, or the judiciaries of their countries.
I do not think that hon. Members who are not members of the Government would have wanted to be constrained in that way. The right hon. Gentleman will have found that he was freer to lobby; he may not have felt constrained anyway. He will have been more able to express his point of view, as a representative of the

organisation that sponsored his visit, than he would otherwise have been. Obviously, we can consider before the next special commission who should attend next time.
I wish to pay tribute to the four very distinguished and senior British judges who assisted the British delegation: the president of the Family Division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss; Lord Justice Thorpe; Lord Bonomy from Scotland; and Mr. Justice Gillen from Northern Ireland. One of the advantages of the way in which Hague cases are dealt with in the UK, as we pointed out, is that all cases are dealt with by a small pool of very experienced senior judges. This contrasts with the position in, for example, the United States, where there are an incredible 30,000 judges who could be asked to do a Hague case, probably for the only time in their lives.
The special commission has recommended that each contracting state should identify a judge able to facilitate communications between judges at the international level, and to act as a contact point between different systems. Lord Justice Thorpe undertakes this role in relation to England and Wales.
I am conscious of the fact that I am about to run out of time, and there are many other important points to address. I will undertake to write to the right hon. Gentleman—

The motion having been made at Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Seven o'clock.